GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 850M, which has clock speeds of 876 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (110%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB should in theory be just a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 850M in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M is quite a bit (more or less 33%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8640 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7416 (112%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.