GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce GTX 560

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 560, which features a GPU core clock speed of 810 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1001 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 336 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 560 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89728 (234%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 should be quite a bit (more or less 72%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18960 (72%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 is a lot (about 293%) better at AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19320 (293%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that 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 number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.