GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs GeForce GTS 150

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTS 150, which comes with core speeds of 740 MHz on the GPU, and 500 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
	Difference: 57 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB should theoretically be a small bit superior to the GeForce GTS 150 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 is much (about 79%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20960 (79%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 150 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are 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 better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.