GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTX 960M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 960M, which has clock speeds of 1096 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 960M should be 11% faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M is a lot (approximately 111%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23040 (111%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960M is superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7136 (69%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.