GeForce 9800 GTX vs GeForce GTX 960M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 960M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1096 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (115%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GTX will be 10% faster than the GeForce GTX 960M overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M will be just a bit (about 1%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 640 (1%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960M is superior to the GeForce 9800 GTX, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6736 (62%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.