GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTX 960M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 960M, which features a core clock frequency of 1096 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (62%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 960M should theoretically be a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M will be much (about 30%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10240 (30%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960M is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7936 (83%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.