GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (165%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is 80% faster than the GeForce GTX 850M in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25728 (80%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M should be much (more or less 40%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9984 (40%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1488 (12%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics 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 number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.