GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GT 640 DDR3

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GT 640 DDR3, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The DDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 1782 MHz on this card. It features 384 SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		65 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GT 640 DDR3 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		57024 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 18624 (49%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 640 DDR3 should be just a bit (more or less 9%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		28800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (9%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 640 DDR3 should be much (about 118%) better at AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7800 (118%)

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 transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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 potential to get to the max fill rate.