GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 970M, which comes with a core clock speed of 924 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 192-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 970M should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (500%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is much (about 740%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 65120 (740%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39952 (908%)

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 past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few 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.