GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 850M, which has clock speeds of 876 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8800 GT 512MB should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 850M in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (80%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M will be a little bit (approximately 4%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1440 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M is quite a bit (about 46%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4416 (46%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.