GeForce 840M vs GeForce 9500 GT DDR2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, which has a clock speed of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory speed of 500 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 65 nm design. It features 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, 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 perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 840M should be much (approximately 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 quite a bit (about 87%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant 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.