GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTX 860M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 860M, which comes with a core clock frequency of 797 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1152 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (111%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 860M, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be quite a bit (approximately 268%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55712 (268%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 860M is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2352 (23%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.