GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 660, which features GPU core speed of 980 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1502 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also features 960 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 660 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (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 quite a bit (about 151%) better at anisotropic filtering 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 lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is the winner, and very much so. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out 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 graphics card will be at 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 record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.