GeForce 8500 GT vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 850M, which comes with a clock speed of 876 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 850M should in theory be much faster than the GeForce 8500 GT in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (150%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M is quite a bit (about 873%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31440 (873%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12216 (679%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.