GeForce GTX 850M vs GeForce GTX 950M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 950M, which has a GPU core clock speed of 914 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 memory running 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

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 850M		3340 points
GeForce GTX 950M		3330 points
	Difference: 10 (0%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M will be a small bit (more or less 4%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 850M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1520 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M is just a bit (more or less 4%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 850M, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 608 (4%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.