GeForce 820M vs GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, which comes with core speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 96 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 820M		15 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (500%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should be 260% faster than the GeForce 820M in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce 820M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (260%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is quite a bit (approximately 171%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 820M. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 820M		11504 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19696 (171%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 820M		2876 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7524 (262%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.