Compare any two graphics cards:

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs GeForce 9800 GT 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 9600 GT 512MB comes with a clock frequency of 650 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 65/55 nm design. It is comprised of 64 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Compare all that to the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 600 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 112 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB will be quite a bit (approximately 62%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (62%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 512MB will be just a bit (about 8%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (8%)

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

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GeForce 9600 GT 512MB

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GeForce 9800 GT 1GB

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce 9600 GT 512MB	GeForce 9800 GT 1GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	Feb 2008	July 2008
Code Name	G94a/b	G92a/b
Memory	512 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	650 MHz	600 MHz
Memory Speed	1800 MHz	1800 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	95 watts	105 watts
Bandwidth	57600 MB/sec	57600 MB/sec
Texel Rate	20800 Mtexels/sec	33600 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	10400 Mpixels/sec	9600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	64	112
Texture Mapping Units	32	56
Render Output Units	16	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR3
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit
Fab Process	65/55 nm	65/55 nm
Transistors	505 million	754 million
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe x16 2.0
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

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