GeForce 8500 GT vs GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, which features clock speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 500 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 RAM. It features 96 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 12 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (87%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 will be 25% faster than the GeForce 8500 GT overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 will be quite a bit (about 633%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (633%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 should be quite a bit (approximately 267%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8500 GT, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (267%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant 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 maximum fill rate.