GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTX 860M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 860M, which has core clock speeds of 797 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1152 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 860M will be 11% faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M should be quite a bit (approximately 128%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42912 (128%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 860M is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3152 (33%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.