GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, which makes use of a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular card. 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 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
	Difference: 43 Watts (91%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (350%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is much (about 261%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22560 (261%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should be a lot (more or less 141%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6080 (141%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

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