GeForce GT 315 vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 850M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 876 MHz. The DDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce GT 315		52 Watts
	Difference: 12 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 850M should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GT 315 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 315		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 6720 (27%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M will be a lot (about 250%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 315. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 315		10000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25040 (250%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 315		5000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9016 (180%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.