GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 970, which features a core clock speed of 1050 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1664 SPUs, 104 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (61%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 970 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (289%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is quite a bit (approximately 250%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 78000 (250%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be a lot (approximately 546%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 56800 (546%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should 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 high 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 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.