GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs GeForce 9800 GTX+

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9800 GTX+, which features a GPU core clock speed of 738 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 1100 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 128 Stream Processors, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (53%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9800 GTX+ should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ will be quite a bit (more or less 127%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26432 (127%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GTX+ is superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many 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.