GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTX 660 Ti

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, which features a GPU core clock speed of 915 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is made up of 1344 Stream Processors, 112 Texture Address Units, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		150 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (58%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 86400 (150%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti will be a lot (about 393%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 81680 (393%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti should be much (about 111%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11560 (111%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.