GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce GTX 650

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 650, which comes with a clock speed of 1058 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 384 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
	Difference: 26 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 650 should be 39% faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (39%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 should be a small bit (more or less 9%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2656 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 650 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6528 (63%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.