GeForce 830M vs GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, which uses a 65 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 550 MHz. The DDR2 memory runs at a speed of 500 MHz on this specific card. It features 96 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 12 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 830M		25 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (236%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 should theoretically be a little bit superior to the GeForce 830M overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 will be quite a bit (more or less 60%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 830M. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9936 (60%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 830M is much (more or less 25%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1632 (25%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per 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 clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.