GeForce 940M vs GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3, which makes use of a 55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 550 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a speed of 800 MHz on this particular model. It features 32 SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 940M in general. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
GeForce 940M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (60%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 940M will be much (about 192%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce 940M		25728 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16928 (192%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 940M is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 940M		8576 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4176 (95%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.