GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 660, which has a core clock speed of 980 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1502 MHz. It also features a 192-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 960 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (56%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 660 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be a lot (approximately 151%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47200 (151%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends 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.