GeForce GT 420 vs GeForce GTX 950M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 950M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 914 MHz. The DDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 950M should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GT 420 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M is a lot (more or less 553%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30960 (553%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950M is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11824 (422%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at 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 that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.