GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs GeForce 9800 GT 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, which comes with core speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 112 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB will be a lot (about 62%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB will be a small bit (approximately 8%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.