GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 850M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 876 MHz. The DDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (138%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 850M in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (80%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M will be a lot (approximately 68%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14240 (68%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M should be quite a bit (about 35%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3616 (35%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output 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.