GeForce 930M vs GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, which features core speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 500 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 RAM. It features 96 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 12 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 should be 11% quicker than the GeForce 930M overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 930M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 should be a little bit (about 19%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 930M. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 930M		22272 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4128 (19%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 930M is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce 930M		7424 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 824 (12%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.