GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs GeForce GTX 850M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 850M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 876 MHz. The DDR3 memory works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (110%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB should be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 850M overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M should be a lot (about 33%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8640 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.