GeForce 830M vs GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, which features GPU clock speed of 550 MHz, and 384 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 800 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also features 96 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 12 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 830M		25 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (236%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB is 167% faster than the GeForce 830M in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 24000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB should be much (more or less 60%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 830M. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9936 (60%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 830M should be much (more or less 25%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.