GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTX 960M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 960M, which comes with clock speeds of 1096 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (62%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 960M should perform a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M should be much (approximately 30%) better at AF than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10240 (30%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M is much (more or less 83%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7936 (83%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. 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 also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.