GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GTX 960M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 960M, which comes with core speeds of 1096 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 132 Watts (203%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should be 100% quicker than the GeForce GTX 960M overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a bit (about 75%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 960M. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32960 (75%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a better choice, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1664 (9%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

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