GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTX 960M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 960M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 1096 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (62%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 960M should be 11% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M should be much (approximately 30%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10240 (30%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M is quite a bit (more or less 83%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.