GeForce 830M vs GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB, which comes with a core clock speed of 550 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency 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 768MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (236%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce 830M in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 24000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB will be a lot (more or less 60%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 830M. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9936 (60%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 830M is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.