GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 850M, which comes with core clock speeds of 876 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		50 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 850M should be 25% faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M is much (more or less 298%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26240 (298%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is superior to the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9616 (219%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.