GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 850M, which has GPU core speed of 876 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 640 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (110%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB should in theory be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 850M overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M should be a lot (about 33%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8640 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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 also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.