GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Geforce GTX 680

Intro

Compare all of that to the Geforce GTX 680, which comes with core clock speeds of 1006 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (105%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 680 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 134656 (234%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be a lot (more or less 519%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 107968 (519%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be a lot (about 210%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21792 (210%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.