GeForce GTS 150 vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 850M, which has a GPU core clock speed of 876 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised 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 memory bandwidth, so in theory they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 should be a lot (approximately 35%) more effective at anisotropic 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 is a little bit (more or less 18%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 150, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must 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 per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a 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 called 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.