GeForce GT 120M vs ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3850

Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the ranking1171not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Power efficiency1.35no data
ArchitectureTeraScale (2005−2013)Tesla (2006−2010)
GPU code nameM88G96C
Market segmentLaptopLaptop
Release date4 June 2008 (16 years ago)15 June 2009 (15 years ago)

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores32032
Core clock speed580 MHz500 MHz
Number of transistors666 million314 million
Manufacturing process technology55 nm55 nm
Power consumption (TDP)35 Watt14 Watt
Texture fill rate9.2808.000
Floating-point processing power0.3712 TFLOPS0.08 TFLOPS
ROPs168
TMUs1616

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Laptop sizelargemedium sized
InterfacePCIe 2.0 x16PCIe 2.0 x16

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory typeGDDR3DDR2
Maximum RAM amount512 MB1 GB
Memory bus width256 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speed750 MHz500 MHz
Memory bandwidth48 GB/s16 GB/s
Shared memory--

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display ConnectorsNo outputsNo outputs

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX10.1 (10_1)11.1 (10_0)
Shader Model4.14.0
OpenGL3.33.3
OpenCLN/A1.1
VulkanN/AN/A
CUDA-1.1

Pros & cons summary


Recency 4 June 2008 15 June 2009
Maximum RAM amount 512 MB 1 GB
Power consumption (TDP) 35 Watt 14 Watt

GT 120M has an age advantage of 1 year, a 100% higher maximum VRAM amount, and 150% lower power consumption.

We couldn't decide between Mobility Radeon HD 3850 and GeForce GT 120M. We've got no test results to judge.


Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.

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ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3850
Mobility Radeon HD 3850
NVIDIA GeForce GT 120M
GeForce GT 120M

Comparisons with similar GPUs

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Community ratings

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1 1 vote

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2.5 16 votes

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Questions & comments

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