GeForce 820M vs GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, which comes with a clock frequency of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory speed of 500 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 65 nm design. It is comprised of 96 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 12 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 820M		15 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (460%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 is much (approximately 129%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 820M. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 820M		11504 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14896 (129%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 is quite a bit (more or less 129%) better at AA than the GeForce 820M, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 820M		2876 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3724 (129%)

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 past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.