GeForce GTX 480 vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 850M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 876 MHz. The DDR3 memory works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 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 480		3650 points
GeForce GTX 850M		3340 points
	Difference: 310 (9%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 210 Watts (525%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 480, in theory, should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 850M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 145408 (454%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be a little bit (more or less 20%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 850M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6960 (20%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is superior to the GeForce GTX 850M, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19584 (140%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.