GeForce GTX 850M vs GeForce GTX 860M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 860M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 797 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 1152 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 860M		4340 points
GeForce GTX 850M		3340 points
	Difference: 1000 (30%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 860M should be 100% quicker than the GeForce GTX 850M overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M should be a lot (about 118%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 850M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41472 (118%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M should be a small bit (more or less 10%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 860M, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1264 (10%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.