GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 970M, which has GPU clock speed of 924 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 970M should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be quite a bit (approximately 255%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53120 (255%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 33952 (326%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant 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.