GeForce GTX 850M vs GeForce GTX 870M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 870M, which features a GPU core clock speed of 941 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1344 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 870M		4770 points
GeForce GTX 850M		3340 points
	Difference: 1430 (43%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (175%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 870M should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 850M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (200%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is much (more or less 201%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 850M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70352 (201%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is a lot (approximately 61%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 850M, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8568 (61%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be 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 better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video 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 amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.