GeForce GTX 965M vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which has GPU core speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 965M		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 965M should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M is much (approximately 465%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		60416 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 49728 (465%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M should be a lot (more or less 183%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		30208 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19520 (183%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.