GeForce GT 650M Mac Edition vs Radeon HD 6850 X2

Place in the ranking	565	959
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Power efficiency	1.80	2.46
Architecture	TeraScale 2 (2009−2015)	Kepler (2012−2018)
GPU code name	Barts	GK107
Market segment	Desktop	Laptop
Release date	19 September 2011 (13 years ago)	12 July 2012 (12 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 cores	960	384
Core clock speed	800 MHz	900 MHz
Number of transistors	1,700 million	1,270 million
Manufacturing process technology	40 nm	28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	254 Watt	45 Watt
Texture fill rate	38.40	28.80
Floating-point processing power	1.536 TFLOPS	0.6912 TFLOPS
ROPs	32	16
TMUs	48	32

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).

Interface	PCIe 2.0 x16	PCIe 3.0 x16
Width	2-slot	no data
Supplementary power connectors	2x 8-pin	no data

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 type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount	2 GB	512 MB
Memory bus width	256 Bit	128 Bit
Memory clock speed	1050 MHz	1254 MHz
Memory bandwidth	134.4 GB/s	80.26 GB/s

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 Connectors	2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort	No outputs
HDMI	+	-

API compatibility

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

DirectX	11.2 (11_0)	12 (11_0)
Shader Model	5.0	5.1
OpenGL	4.4	4.6
OpenCL	1.2	1.2
Vulkan	N/A	1.1.126
CUDA	-	3.0

Gaming performance

Let's see how good the compared graphics cards are for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in FPS.

Pros & cons summary

Performance score	6.57	1.59
Recency	19 September 2011	12 July 2012
Maximum RAM amount	2 GB	512 MB
Chip lithography	40 nm	28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	254 Watt	45 Watt

HD 6850 X2 has a 313.2% higher aggregate performance score, and a 300% higher maximum VRAM amount.

GT 650M Mac Edition, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 9 months, a 42.9% more advanced lithography process, and 464.4% lower power consumption.

The Radeon HD 6850 X2 is our recommended choice as it beats the GeForce GT 650M Mac Edition in performance tests.

Be aware that Radeon HD 6850 X2 is a desktop card while GeForce GT 650M Mac Edition is a notebook one.

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