GeForce 840M vs GeForce 9500 GT DDR2

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, which comes with GPU clock speed of 550 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR2 memory set to run at 500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 32 Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 840M		30 Watts
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 840M will be much (more or less 181%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 840M		24696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15896 (181%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 840M will be a lot (about 87%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 840M		8232 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3832 (87%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to 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 ability to reach the max fill rate.