GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce GTS 150

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTS 150, which uses a 55 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 740 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 500 MHz on this specific model. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
	Difference: 57 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB should be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTS 150 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 should be much (about 79%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20960 (79%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 will be a lot (more or less 79%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5240 (79%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.