GeForce GTS 150 vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 850M, which has a core clock frequency of 876 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
	Difference: 101 Watts (253%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 is a lot (about 35%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 850M. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12320 (35%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M will be just a bit (about 18%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 150, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2176 (18%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.