GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, which uses a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 96 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 53 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB should theoretically be a little bit better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5760 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB will be quite a bit (more or less 27%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6576 (27%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is just a bit (approximately 1%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 140 (1%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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