GeForce 940M vs GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 550 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 800 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also features 96 Stream Processors, 48 Texture Address Units, and 12 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 940M in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce 940M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (140%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB will be a bit (about 3%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 940M. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 940M		25728 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 672 (3%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 940M is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 940M		8576 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels 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 amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.