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GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTS 250 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB uses a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this card. It features 64 SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, which comes with core clock speeds of 738 MHz on the GPU, and 1100 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB 95 Watts
GeForce GTS 250 1GB 145 Watts
Difference: 50 Watts (53%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 250 1GB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB 70400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB 57600 MB/sec
Difference: 12800 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB should be a lot (approximately 127%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB 47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB 20800 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 26432 (127%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 250 1GB is a bit (more or less 14%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB 11808 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB 10400 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 1408 (14%)

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

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GeForce 9600 GT 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

GeForce GTS 250 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 9600 GT 1GB GeForce GTS 250 1GB
Manufacturer nVidia nVidia
Year Feb 2008 March 3, 2009
Code Name G94a/b G92a/b
Memory 1024 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 650 MHz 738 MHz
Memory Speed 1800 MHz 2200 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 95 watts 145 watts
Bandwidth 57600 MB/sec 70400 MB/sec
Texel Rate 20800 Mtexels/sec 47232 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 10400 Mpixels/sec 11808 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 64 128
Texture Mapping Units 32 64
Render Output Units 16 16
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR3
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 65/55 nm 65/55 nm
Transistors 505 million 754 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe x16 2.0
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 10
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

GeForce GTS 250 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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