NVIDIA GeForce 9500M GS

The NVIDIA GeForce 9500M GS is an end-of-life mobile GPU manufactured by TSMC on an 80 nm process. Its G84 chip packs 289 million transistors into a 169 mm² die, for a transistor density of 1.7M / mm². The part belongs to the GeForce 9M (9500M) generation and uses the Tesla architecture; it succeeded the GeForce 8M and was succeeded by the GeForce 100M. Released on 2008-01-31, the GPU carries a 20 W TDP, needs no power connectors, and connects over PCIe 1.0 x16. The FACT PACK lists no base, boost, or game clock; the only clock specified is the memory clock of 700 MHz, which corresponds to 1400 Mbps effective.

How It Compares

The nearestRivals field in the data record is empty, containing no rival names, scores, or deltaPct values. As a result, this database entry provides no direct comparison to another GPU. The only positional indicator is percentileVsAllGpus, set to 50, but this sits alongside an average benchmark score of 0. That combination suggests a middle-of-stack placement that is not supported by any measured benchmark entry; the 50th percentile is an unverified location rather than an empirically determined rank.

Without rival data, the comparison must rely on the GPU's own specification. The 9500M GS is built around 32 shading units, 16 texture mapping units, and 8 render output units. It is paired with 512 MB of GDDR3 memory on a 128-bit bus, delivering 22.40 GB/s of bandwidth. That 32:16:8 configuration, combined with a 512 MB frame buffer, defines the GPU's expected workload class more precisely than any external competitor score could. The FP32 throughput of 60.80 GFLOPS, the texture rate of 7.600 GTexel/s, and the pixel rate of 3.800 GPixel/s are the only numerical performance anchors in the record.

The predecessor and successor fields add a timeline: the part replaces the GeForce 8M and comes before the GeForce 100M. Neither of those generations carries a score in the FACT PACK, so they establish product positioning rather than performance relationships. The production status of end-of-life also appears in the data, but no additional context is provided to explain why the benchmark records are empty.

Ray Tracing and Feature Set

The rtCores and tensorCores fields are both null in the FACT PACK. The 9500M GS therefore has no hardware ray tracing cores and no tensor cores for AI-accelerated workloads. In practical terms, this is a rasterization-only design; any ray tracing effect would have to be executed on the general-purpose shading units, with no dedicated acceleration path.

API support in the record consists of DirectX 11.1 (10_0) and OpenGL 3.3. The DirectX entry is significant: it pairs a later API version with feature level 10_0, meaning the part reports a DirectX 11.1 interface while exposing the capability set of feature level 10_0. The OpenGL field lists 3.3 support. The Vulkan field is null, so no Vulkan support is recorded for this device. Taken together, the API data describes a GPU that cannot run applications requiring Vulkan and whose DirectX feature level falls short of the full 11.1 feature set.

Display output is listed as Portable Device Dependent, so NVIDIA did not define a fixed set of output connectors. Instead, the laptop or portable-system manufacturer implemented the actual display pipeline. That makes the GPU's real-world feature exposure dependent on the host system, rather than on a standard NVIDIA configuration.

Memory Subsystem

Memory configuration is a defining characteristic of the 9500M GS. The frame buffer is 512 MB of GDDR3, connected over a 128-bit bus. The memory clock is 700 MHz, with an effective data rate of 1400 Mbps; those figures produce 22.40 GB/s of memory bandwidth.

For a 32-shader, 8-ROP part, 22.40 GB/s is the ceiling on data that can flow between memory and the chip. At higher resolution settings, the 512 MB capacity fills quickly; color, depth, and texture data all compete for the same space. The 128-bit bus width adds a second constraint: even when capacity is available, the bus limits the rate at which data can be delivered. The 3.800 GPixel/s pixel rate and 7.600 GTexel/s texture rate show that the GPU's internal fill rates are also modest, so high-resolution rendering would likely bottleneck on memory capacity, memory bandwidth, or both.

The 512 MB capacity is particularly important for texture-heavy workloads. Once the back buffer and depth buffer consume their share of memory, the remaining space for textures is limited. A game with large texture assets would therefore need to use lower-detail settings or smaller texture resolution. The 22.40 GB/s bandwidth then becomes the second gate, because moving those assets from system memory would take time. In this way, the memory subsystem determines the 9500M GS's practical resolution ceiling as much as the shading and pixel pipelines do.

Who Should Consider It

The 9500M GS has no recorded benchmarks, so any assessment must come from the specification sheet. The part's 32 shading units and 8 ROPs, alongside 512 MB of GDDR3 and 22.40 GB/s of bandwidth, place it in the range of a low-power mobile GPU. It is best suited to users running less demanding titles at lower resolutions and moderate detail settings.

The 20 W TDP and the absence of power connectors make it an option for portable systems with limited thermal and power budgets. That low-power profile is double-edged: it allows integration into compact designs, but it also caps sustained performance. The memory subsystem reinforces that conclusion, since 512 MB and 22.40 GB/s are figures associated with modest resolution targets.

Because the display outputs are Portable Device Dependent, the actual visual experience depends on the laptop's built-in panel. The GPU cannot be expected to drive very high pixel-count displays effectively, given the 512 MB frame buffer and 128-bit memory bus. Users with light workloads, such as legacy games, 2D desktop acceleration, and older DirectX-based applications, are the appropriate audience. The null rtCores and tensorCores fields also mean that ray tracing and tensor-accelerated features are unavailable, and the null Vulkan field excludes Vulkan-only software.

Benchmark Performance

The benchmark arrays in the FACT PACK are empty. The record shows no workloads, no frame-rate results, and no nearestRivals list; the average benchmark score is 0. Consequently, there are no observed scores to analyze and no deltaPct values to report. The percentileVsAllGpus field of 50 is the only percentile available, but it cannot be validated against any actual benchmark run.

The quantitative performance data that does exist is composed of theoretical peak rates. FP32 throughput is 60.80 GFLOPS. Texture fill rate is 7.600 GTexel/s. Pixel fill rate is 3.800 GPixel/s. These rates reveal a consistent hardware balance: texture rate is exactly twice pixel rate, and FP32 throughput is exactly 16 times pixel rate and exactly 8 times texture rate. Those ratios follow from the fixed resource counts of 32 shading units, 16 TMUs, and 8 ROPs. The arithmetic does not translate into application-level predictions, but it confirms that the GPU's peak rates are internally consistent with its published resources.

There are no base, boost, or game clocks in the record, so the 60.80 GFLOPS figure cannot be decomposed into per-shader clock speed. The only clock specified is the memory clock of 700 MHz, or 1400 Mbps effective. Without core clock data, even theoretical scaling estimates are impossible. The transistor density of 1.7M / mm² is another specification without a direct performance interpretation; it describes manufacturing efficiency, not rendering capability.

In sum, the benchmark section of this entry exists in name only. The 50th percentile placement is present in the record, but with an average score of 0 and no rivals, the 9500M GS's position cannot be verified numerically. The GPU is defined by its 60.80 GFLOPS FP32 peak, its 7.600 GTexel/s texture rate, its 3.800 GPixel/s pixel rate, and a memory subsystem rated at 22.40 GB/s.