GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 970M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 924 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 970M should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (150%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be a lot (about 180%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47520 (180%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 37752 (572%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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