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

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, which comes with clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 96 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

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 in theory be a small bit superior to 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 should be a lot (approximately 27%) faster with regards to AF 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

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is a better choice, though not by far. (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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.