GeForce GTS 150 vs GeForce GTX 950M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 950M, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 914 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 640 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (156%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so in theory they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 is quite a bit (more or less 30%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 950M. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (30%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M should be a lot (approximately 24%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTS 150, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2784 (24%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.