GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GTX 660 Ti

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, which has clock speeds of 915 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1344 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 24 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 660 Ti		150 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti is 275% faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 105600 (275%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti is quite a bit (about 288%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 76080 (288%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 Ti is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15360 (233%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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