GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 980M, which has GPU clock speed of 1038 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 Stream Processors, 96 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980M should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be a lot (approximately 219%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68448 (219%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 56032 (539%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.