GeForce 840M vs GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB, which features core clock speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 768 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 96 SPUs as well as 48 TAUs and 12 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 840M		30 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 54 Watts (180%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 840M overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce 840M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (140%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB will be a little bit (more or less 7%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 840M. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 840M		24696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1704 (7%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 840M will be a lot (approximately 25%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 840M		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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.