Radeon RX 540X vs GeForce GTX 850M

Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the ranking566not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Power efficiency10.08no data
ArchitectureMaxwell (2014−2017)GCN 4.0 (2016−2020)
GPU code nameGM107Polaris 23
Market segmentLaptopLaptop
Release date12 March 2014 (10 years ago)11 April 2018 (6 years ago)

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores640512
Core clock speedUp to 936 MHz1124 MHz
Boost clock speedno data1219 MHz
Number of transistors1,870 million2,200 million
Manufacturing process technology28 nm14 nm
Power consumption (TDP)45 Watt50 Watt
Texture fill rate36.0839.01
Floating-point processing power1.155 TFLOPS1.248 TFLOPS
ROPs1616
TMUs4032

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Laptop sizemedium sizedlarge
Bus supportPCI Express 2.0, PCI Express 3.0no data
InterfacePCIe 3.0 x16PCIe 3.0 x8
Supplementary power connectorsno dataNone
SLI options+-

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory typeDDR3GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount2 GB2 GB
Standard memory configurationDDR3 or GDDR5no data
Memory bus width128 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speedUp to 2500 MHz1500 MHz
Memory bandwidth80.0 GB/s96 GB/s
Shared memory--

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display ConnectorsNo outputsNo outputs
eDP 1.2 signal supportUp to 3840x2160no data
LVDS signal supportUp to 1920x1200no data
VGA аnalog display supportUp to 2048x1536no data
DisplayPort Multimode (DP++) supportUp to 3840x2160no data
HDMI+-
HDCP content protection+-
7.1 channel HD audio on HDMI+-
TrueHD and DTS-HD audio bitstreaming+-

Supported technologies

Supported technological solutions. This information will prove useful if you need some particular technology for your purposes.

FreeSync-+
H.264, VC1, MPEG2 1080p video decoder+-
Optimus+-
Ansel+-

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX12 (11_0)12 (12_0)
Shader Model5.16.4
OpenGL4.54.6
OpenCL1.12.0
Vulkan1.1.1261.2.131
CUDA+-

Pros & cons summary


Recency 12 March 2014 11 April 2018
Chip lithography 28 nm 14 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 45 Watt 50 Watt

GTX 850M has 11.1% lower power consumption.

RX 540X, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 4 years, and a 100% more advanced lithography process.

We couldn't decide between GeForce GTX 850M and Radeon RX 540X. We've got no test results to judge.


Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.

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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M
GeForce GTX 850M
AMD Radeon RX 540X
Radeon RX 540X

Comparisons with similar GPUs

We selected several comparisons of graphics cards with performance close to those reviewed, providing you with more options to consider.

Community ratings

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3.8 524 votes

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Questions & comments

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