GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 970, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1050 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1750 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1664 Stream Processors, 104 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
	Difference: 61 Watts (73%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 970 is 1300% faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 208000 (1300%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is a lot (approximately 314%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 82800 (314%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 60600 (918%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in one second.

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