GeForce 840M vs GeForce 8500 GT

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 8500 GT, which features core speeds of 450 MHz on the GPU, and 400 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 RAM. It features 16 SPUs as well as 8 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 840M		30 Watts
GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 840M, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

GeForce 840M		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 840M will be much (approximately 586%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

GeForce 840M		24696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21096 (586%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 840M should be much (about 357%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8500 GT, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 840M		8232 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6432 (357%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 per second.

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