GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 980M, which features a core clock frequency of 1038 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 980M should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is a lot (about 379%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 78848 (379%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant 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.