GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, which makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 550 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 800 MHz on this particular card. It features 96 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 12 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (200%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB is much (more or less 500%) better at AF than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22000 (500%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4400 (200%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 per second.

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