GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which has a core clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 61 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 860M should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M should be quite a bit (approximately 517%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64112 (517%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M should be just a bit (about 3%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 352 (3%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.