GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce 9800 GTX

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 9800 GTX, which uses a 65 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 675 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 1100 MHz on this specific card. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (56%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GTX should be 22% faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX is a lot (more or less 38%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (38%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GTX is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (4%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.