GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs GeForce GTX 870M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 870M, which comes with a core clock frequency of 941 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 192-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1344 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
	Difference: 26 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 870M should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (500%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be a lot (about 299%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 78992 (299%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 870M is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15984 (242%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.