GeForce GT 230 vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 850M, which has core speeds of 876 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (63%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 230 should be 20% faster than the GeForce GTX 850M in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M is much (approximately 298%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26240 (298%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9616 (219%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of 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 - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.