GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce 9800 GTX+

Intro

Compare all that 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 made up of 128 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (61%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GTX+ should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ will be quite a bit (more or less 51%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16032 (51%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GTX+ is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across 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 type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.