GeForce 820M vs GeForce 9600 GT 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, which has a clock frequency of 650 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 65/55 nm design. It is comprised of 64 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 820M		15 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (533%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 820M overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce 820M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (260%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 512MB is quite a bit (approximately 81%) better at AF than the GeForce 820M. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 820M		11504 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9296 (81%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 820M		2876 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7524 (262%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.