GeForce 940M vs GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, which uses a 65 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 550 MHz. The DDR2 RAM is set to run at a speed of 500 MHz on this specific card. It features 96 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 12 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 should be a bit (about 3%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 940M. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 940M		25728 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 672 (3%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 940M should be quite a bit (about 30%) better at AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 940M		8576 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1976 (30%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.