GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTX 960M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 960M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1096 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (62%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 960M is 11% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M will be quite a bit (about 30%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10240 (30%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M should be much (about 83%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.