GeForce 820M vs GeForce 9500 GT DDR2

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, which makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 550 MHz. The DDR2 RAM is set to run at a speed of 500 MHz on this specific model. It features 32 SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 820M		15 Watts
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 820M is a lot (more or less 31%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 820M		11504 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2704 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 is a lot (about 53%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 820M, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 820M		2876 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1524 (53%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.