GeForce 830M vs GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, which features clock speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 500 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 memory. 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 830M		25 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (236%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 should perform just a bit faster than the GeForce 830M overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 is quite a bit (approximately 60%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 830M. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9936 (60%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 830M is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1632 (25%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.