GeForce GTX 850M vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 970M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 924 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 970M		7520 points
GeForce GTX 850M		3340 points
	Difference: 4180 (125%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 970M should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 850M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (200%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M will be quite a bit (more or less 111%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 850M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38880 (111%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M will be a lot (approximately 216%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 850M, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30336 (216%)

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 moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 applied per second.

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