GeForce 820M vs GeForce 9600 GT 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, which features a core clock frequency of 650 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 65/55 nm design. It is comprised of 64 SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 820M		15 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (533%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB should be much faster than the GeForce 820M in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce 820M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (260%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB should be much (approximately 81%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 820M. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 820M		11504 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9296 (81%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB is a lot (about 262%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 820M, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.