GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 850M, which comes with clock speeds of 876 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (110%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB should perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 850M in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M should be much (about 33%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8640 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7416 (112%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.