GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 850M, which has a core clock speed of 876 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 157 Watts (393%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 850M overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (300%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be a lot (about 119%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 850M. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41760 (119%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the GeForce GTX 850M, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5184 (37%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.