GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 980M, which has a core clock speed of 1038 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980M should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be quite a bit (approximately 379%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 78848 (379%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 56032 (539%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.