GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 850M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 876 MHz. The DDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (300%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 460 2GB will be 260% faster than the GeForce GTX 850M in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (260%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB should be a bit (approximately 8%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 850M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2760 (8%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7584 (54%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.