AMD Radeon R9 M375X vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The benchmark database records two compute-focused tests for these mobile graphics processors: Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan. In both, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M takes the lead, but the margins tell very different stories about where each chip has its strengths.

Starting with Geekbench OpenCL, the GTX 850M posts a score of 9,821 against the Radeon R9 M375X's 8,273. That is a delta of 18.7 percent in NVIDIA's favor. This is the largest gap between the two cards in any recorded test, and it suggests that the Maxwell architecture's OpenCL execution is substantially more efficient than the GCN 1.0 implementation in the AMD part. The 18.7 percent advantage is not a minor edge; it is a decisive margin that would translate into noticeably faster compute workloads, especially those that scale well with raw shader throughput and memory bandwidth.

The Vulkan test narrows the gap considerably. Here the GTX 850M scores 8,782, while the R9 M375X trails at 8,377, producing a delta of only 4.8 percent. This is a much closer contest. Vulkan's lower-level API overhead tends to equalize differences in driver efficiency and hardware scheduling, and the data reflects that. The AMD part is clearly more competitive in this API, but it still loses. The NVIDIA card maintains its winning streak, though the smaller margin indicates that the R9 M375X's architecture is not fundamentally outclassed in every workload.

Across the two recorded benchmarks, the GTX 850M wins both, giving it a 2-0 record in head-to-head comparisons. The average benchmark score for the NVIDIA chip is 9,302, while the AMD chip averages 8,325. That overall average difference of roughly 977 points aligns closely with the OpenCL result, which dominates the average due to its larger sample weight. The Vulkan score pulls the NVIDIA average down slightly, but not enough to change the hierarchy.

Looking at the percentile rankings, the GTX 850M sits at the 46th percentile among all GPUs in the database, while the R9 M375X rests at the 43rd percentile. These are close positions, and they reflect that both cards are mid-pack mobile parts. The 3-percentile-point gap is modest, but it is consistent with the benchmark scores: NVIDIA holds a real, measurable edge.

The nearest rivals for the GTX 850M provide context for its position. The database lists the GeForce GTX 465 at an average score of 9,294, a delta of just 0.1 percent from the 850M. That is effectively a tie. The Radeon R7 M380 scores 9,313, which is 0.1 percent higher than the 850M. The GeForce GTX 960 lands at 9,273, 0.3 percent lower. The Radeon Vega 8 scores 9,221, 0.9 percent lower. These four rivals bracket the 850M extremely tightly, indicating that the chip sits in a crowded performance band where small variations in driver or thermal conditions could flip the order.

For the R9 M375X, the nearest rivals show a similar clustering but slightly lower absolute scores. The Quadro K1200 averages 8,265, which is 0.7 percent below the AMD part. The GeForce GTX 675MX averages 8,427, putting it 1.2 percent ahead. The Radeon 880M scores 8,436, 1.3 percent ahead. The GeForce MX330 averages 8,458, 1.6 percent ahead. So the R9 M375X sits near the bottom of its immediate competitor group, with three of its four nearest rivals outperforming it by margins ranging from 1.2 to 1.6 percent.

Architecture Differences

The two chips come from different architectural lineages, and the recorded specifications show several key divergences. The GTX 850M uses the GM107 chip, built on NVIDIA's Maxwell architecture, fabricated by TSMC on a 28 nm process. The R9 M375X uses the Tropo chip, built on AMD's GCN 1.0 architecture, also on TSMC's 28 nm node. Both share the same process node, but their transistor budgets differ: the GM107 packs 1,870 million transistors on a 148 mm² die, while Tropo contains 1,500 million transistors on a 123 mm² die. The resulting transistor densities are 12.6 million per square millimeter for NVIDIA versus 12.2 million for AMD, a small but measurable difference in packing efficiency.

The raw compute resources are identical in count: both chips have 640 shading units, 40 texture mapping units, and 16 render output units. That means the theoretical pixel and texture throughput ceilings are similar. The GTX 850M records a pixel rate of 14.43 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 36.08 GTexel/s. The R9 M375X posts a pixel rate of 16.24 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 40.60 GTexel/s. Despite having the same unit counts, the AMD chip achieves higher pixel and texture rates because its clock speeds are higher. The GTX 850M has no recorded base or boost clock in the database, but the R9 M375X runs at a base of 925 MHz and a boost of 1015 MHz. That clock advantage drives the fill-rate differences.

Floating-point performance follows the same pattern. The GTX 850M delivers 1,154.6 GFLOPS of FP32 compute, while the R9 M375X reaches 1,299.2 GFLOPS. The AMD part is roughly 12.5 percent ahead in raw theoretical FP32 throughput, a direct consequence of its higher clocks. Yet in actual benchmark results, the NVIDIA chip wins both tests. This is a clear case where architectural efficiency outweighs raw specification numbers.

Memory is where the biggest architectural divergence appears. The GTX 850M uses 2 GB of DDR3 memory on a 128-bit bus, yielding 32.03 GB/s of bandwidth. The R9 M375X uses 2 GB of GDDR5 memory on the same 128-bit bus, but its effective clock of 4.5 Gbps produces 72.00 GB/s of bandwidth. That is more than double the NVIDIA part's memory throughput. The GDDR5 implementation gives AMD a substantial theoretical advantage in bandwidth-bound workloads, yet the benchmark scores do not reflect that advantage translating into wins. The NVIDIA card's memory controller and cache hierarchy appear to compensate for the lower bandwidth in the recorded tests.

The API support also differs. The GTX 850M supports DirectX 12 (11_0), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. The R9 M375X supports DirectX 12 (11_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.2.170. The NVIDIA part has a newer Vulkan revision, which may contribute to its Vulkan benchmark win. The DirectX 11_1 versus 11_0 distinction is minor for most workloads, but it does reflect a slightly newer feature set on the AMD side.

Power characteristics differ as well. The GTX 850M has a recorded TDP of 45 W and is listed as an IGP (integrated graphics processor) with no power connectors. The R9 M375X has no TDP recorded and no slot width or power connector data. The NVIDIA part's lower TDP, combined with its benchmark wins, suggests better performance-per-watt in the recorded tests. The AMD part's higher clocks likely consume more power, though without a TDP figure, the database cannot quantify the difference.

The bus interface is the same for both: PCIe 3.0 x16. The GTX 850M's display outputs are listed as portable-device-dependent, while the R9 M375X has no display output data recorded. Both are end-of-life products, with the GTX 850M released on March 11, 2014, and the R9 M375X released on May 4, 2015. The NVIDIA chip is part of the GeForce 800M generation, succeeding the GeForce 700M and preceding the GeForce 900M. The AMD chip belongs to the Gem System (R9 M300) generation, succeeding the Solar System and preceding Polaris Mobile.

Where Each One Wins

The GTX 850M wins in every recorded benchmark, so the "wins" split is straightforward from the data. However, the magnitude of each win reveals different application scenarios. In OpenCL-heavy workloads, the NVIDIA card's 18.7 percent lead makes it the clear choice. OpenCL is commonly used in compute tasks such as video encoding, image processing, and scientific simulations. The GTX 850M's Maxwell architecture appears better suited to these parallel compute patterns, despite having lower theoretical FP32 throughput than the AMD chip. The data suggests that NVIDIA's compiler and driver stack, combined with the Maxwell scheduler, extract more real-world performance per GFLOPS.

In Vulkan-based applications, the margin shrinks to 4.8 percent. Vulkan is primarily a gaming API, used in modern titles that leverage low-overhead rendering. The GTX 850M still wins, but the smaller delta indicates that the R9 M375X is more competitive in this environment. The AMD chip's higher fill rates and double the memory bandwidth likely help it close the gap in rendering workloads that are bandwidth-sensitive. A gamer running Vulkan titles would see a modest advantage for the NVIDIA card, not a dominant one.

The R9 M375X does not win any head-to-head benchmark, but the architecture data points to scenarios where it could perform better than the GTX 850M in untested workloads. Its 72.00 GB/s of bandwidth versus 32.03 GB/s means any application that is heavily memory-bandwidth-bound, such as high-resolution texture streaming or certain compute kernels that repeatedly access large datasets, would favor the AMD part. Its higher pixel rate of 16.24 GPixel/s versus 14.43 GPixel/s also suggests an edge in fill-rate-limited scenarios, such as high-resolution rendering with simple shaders. These are hypothetical advantages, not recorded wins, but they are grounded in the specification differences.

The GTX 850M's nearest rivals cluster tightly around its average score, with the Radeon R7 M380 slightly ahead and the GTX 465 essentially tied. This indicates that in the broader mobile GPU market, the 850M is a well-rounded performer that does not have a single dominant weakness. The R9 M375X's nearest rivals are mostly faster, with the Quadro K1200 slightly behind it and three other chips ahead by 1.2 to 1.6 percent. The AMD part sits at the lower edge of its competitive band, meaning it would likely lose to most similarly priced or positioned rivals from NVIDIA.

For specific use cases, the GTX 850M is the safer choice for compute-oriented tasks, given its OpenCL dominance and Vulkan edge. The R9 M375X could be considered for bandwidth-sensitive workloads, but the recorded data does not validate that choice with any benchmark win. The NVIDIA card also holds the advantage in API modernity for Vulkan, with version 1.4 support versus 1.2.170 on the AMD side.

The Verdict

The benchmark data is unambiguous: the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M outperforms the AMD Radeon R9 M375X in both recorded tests. The OpenCL win of 18.7 percent is decisive, and the Vulkan win of 4.8 percent, while narrower, still confirms NVIDIA's overall superiority. The average benchmark scores of 9,302 versus 8,325 reinforce this conclusion, as does the percentile ranking of 46 versus 43.

A user who needs a mobile GPU for compute workloads, OpenCL acceleration, or Vulkan-based gaming should choose the GTX 850M based on this data. The NVIDIA chip delivers higher real-world performance despite lower theoretical specifications in FP32 throughput and memory bandwidth. This is a classic case of architectural efficiency winning over raw numbers.

The R9 M375X is not without merit. Its higher clock speeds, greater pixel and texture rates, double the memory bandwidth, and higher FP32 output are all recorded facts. In workloads that are not represented in the benchmark suite, particularly those that are purely bandwidth-bound or fill-rate-bound, the AMD card could potentially outperform the NVIDIA part. But the database contains no evidence of such a win, and the two recorded tests both favor NVIDIA.

The production status of both cards is end-of-life, so neither is a current purchase recommendation for new systems. For those comparing used or existing laptops, the GTX 850M is the stronger performer. The R9 M375X would only make sense if the specific software in use is known to favor AMD's GCN architecture, but no such software is identified in the recorded data.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M has an average benchmark score of 9,302, while the AMD Radeon R9 M375X averages 8,325.

Q: How much faster is the GTX 850M in Geekbench OpenCL?

A: The GTX 850M scores 9,821 versus 8,273 for the R9 M375X, giving NVIDIA an 18.7 percent advantage in that test.

Q: Does the R9 M375X win any benchmark against the GTX 850M?

A: No. The GTX 850M wins both recorded benchmarks: Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan, with a 2-0 head-to-head record.

Q: What are the memory configurations of these two GPUs?

A: The GTX 850M uses 2 GB of DDR3 on a 128-bit bus with 32.03 GB/s bandwidth. The R9 M375X uses 2 GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus with 72.00 GB/s bandwidth.

Q: Which GPU has higher theoretical FP32 compute performance?

A: The R9 M375X has higher FP32 performance at 1,299.2 GFLOPS, compared to 1,154.6 GFLOPS for the GTX 850M.

Q: How do their Vulkan API versions compare?

A: The GTX 850M supports Vulkan 1.4, while the R9 M375X supports Vulkan 1.2.170. The NVIDIA card has a newer Vulkan revision.