GeForce 830M vs GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, which comes with a clock speed of 550 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also makes use of a 192-bit memory bus, and uses a 65 nm design. It is made up of 96 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 12 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 830M		25 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (236%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 830M overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 24000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB should be quite a bit (more or less 60%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 830M. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9936 (60%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 830M is quite a bit (more or less 25%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.