GeForce 820M vs GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, which makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 550 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 800 MHz on this specific model. It features 96 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 12 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 820M		15 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (460%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce 820M overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce 820M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (140%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB should be quite a bit (more or less 129%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 820M. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 820M		11504 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14896 (129%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type 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 better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.