GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Geforce GTX 690

Intro

Compare all of that to the Geforce GTX 690, which comes with core clock speeds of 915 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 216 Watts (257%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Geforce GTX 690 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 346112 (901%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 is much (more or less 787%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 207840 (787%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 should be a lot (approximately 787%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 51960 (787%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.