GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which features core clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 870M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9984 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is quite a bit (about 393%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 84016 (393%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is a small bit (more or less 6%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1208 (6%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.