GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 850M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 876 MHz. The DDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 640 SPUs along with 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 GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (263%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 850M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (120%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB should be much (approximately 35%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 850M. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12192 (35%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M should be a little bit (approximately 19%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2208 (19%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.