GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce GTS 250 512MB

Intro

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB makes use of a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 96 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTS 250 512MB, which has core speeds of 738 MHz on the GPU, and 1100 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

GeForce GTS 250 512MB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB	GeForce GTS 250 512MB
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	October 2008	March 3, 2009
Code Name	G94a/b	G92a/b
Fab Process	65/55 nm	65/55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe x16 2.0
Memory	512 MB	512 MB
Core Speed	650 MHz	738 MHz
Shader Speed	1625 MHz	1836 MHz
Memory Speed	900 MHz	1100 MHz
Unified Shaders	96	128
Texture Mapping Units	48	64
Render Output Units	16	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR3
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.1
Power (Max TDP)	90 watts	145 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.0
Bandwidth	57600 MB/sec	70400 MB/sec
Texel Rate	31200 Mtexels/sec	47232 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	10400 Mpixels/sec	11808 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.