GeForce 820M vs GeForce 9500 GT DDR2

Intro

The GeForce 820M features a GPU core clock speed of 719 MHz, and the 2048 MB of DDR3 memory is set to run at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 96 SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all that to the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, which has GPU clock speed of 550 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR2 RAM set to run at 500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 32 Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.