GeForce GTX 850M vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 980M, which comes with a clock speed of 1038 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 980M		9476 points
GeForce GTX 850M		3340 points
	Difference: 6136 (184%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980M		155 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 850M		49 Sol/s
	Difference: 106 (216%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 980M should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 850M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (300%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be a lot (about 184%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 850M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64608 (184%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is quite a bit (approximately 374%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 850M, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 52416 (374%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.