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GeForce GT 420 vs GeForce GTX 950M

Intro

The GeForce GT 420 has a core clock speed of 700 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 48 SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 950M, which features a GPU core clock speed of 914 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 640 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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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

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 950M should in theory be a small bit superior to the GeForce GT 420 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M should be a lot (more or less 553%) faster with regards to texture 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 screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950M is a better choice, by a large margin. (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

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GeForce GT 420

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GeForce GTX 950M

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce GT 420	GeForce GTX 950M
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	September 2010	March 12 2015
Code Name	GF108	GM107
Memory	2048 MB	2048 MB
Core Speed	700 MHz	914 MHz
Memory Speed	1800 MHz	2000 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	50 watts	55 watts
Bandwidth	28800 MB/sec	32000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	5600 Mtexels/sec	36560 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	2800 Mpixels/sec	14624 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	48	640
Texture Mapping Units	8	40
Render Output Units	4	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	DDR3
Bus Width	128-bit	128-bit
Fab Process	40 nm	28 nm
Transistors	585 million	(Unknown) million
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 11	DirectX 12
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.1	OpenGL 4.5

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.

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