GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs GeForce 9800 GTX

Intro

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB features a GPU clock speed of 650 MHz, and the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM is set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 64 Stream Processors, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9800 GTX, which has core speeds of 675 MHz on the GPU, and 1100 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 128 SPUs along with 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 9800 GTX Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 9600 GT 1GB	GeForce 9800 GTX
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	Feb 2008	April 2008
Code Name	G94a/b	G92
Fab Process	65/55 nm	65 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe x16 2.0
Memory	1024 MB	512 MB
Core Speed	650 MHz	675 MHz
Shader Speed	1625 MHz	1688 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 3.0
Power (Max TDP)	95 watts	140 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.0
Bandwidth	57600 MB/sec	70400 MB/sec
Texel Rate	20800 Mtexels/sec	43200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	10400 Mpixels/sec	10800 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

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