GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 660, which features core speeds of 980 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 960 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 660 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 86592 (150%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is much (about 277%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57600 (277%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13120 (126%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling 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 could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.