GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce 9800 GT 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, which makes use of a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 112 SPUs as well as 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 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB should be just a bit (approximately 8%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (8%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB will be a small bit (approximately 8%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.