GeForce GTX 850M vs GeForce GTX 960

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 960, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 1127 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1750 MHz on this specific model. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 960		7627 points
GeForce GTX 850M		3340 points
	Difference: 4287 (128%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 960		154 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 850M		49 Sol/s
	Difference: 105 (214%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 960 will be 250% faster than the GeForce GTX 850M overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (250%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be quite a bit (approximately 106%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 850M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37088 (106%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 is quite a bit (about 157%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 850M, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22048 (157%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across 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 it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.