GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 980M, which comes with clock speeds of 1038 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 980M, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (233%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be much (about 277%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73248 (277%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be a lot (about 907%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 59832 (907%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.