GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTS 250 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB comes with a core clock speed of 650 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 65/55 nm design. It is made up of 64 SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all that to the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, which comes with GPU core speed of 738 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 1100 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 128 Stream Processors, 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 GT 1GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

GeForce GTS 250 1GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 9600 GT 1GB	GeForce GTS 250 1GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	Feb 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	1024 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	650 MHz	738 MHz
Shader Speed	1625 MHz	1836 MHz
Memory Speed	900 MHz	1100 MHz
Unified Shaders	64	128
Texture Mapping Units	32	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)	95 watts	145 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.0
Bandwidth	57600 MB/sec	70400 MB/sec
Texel Rate	20800 Mtexels/sec	47232 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	10400 Mpixels/sec	11808 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 the video card could possibly record 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 speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.