GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, which comes with clock speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 96 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 12 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (70%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB is 65% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 24960 (65%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB will be a bit (about 7%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1776 (7%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB should be quite a bit (approximately 55%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3660 (55%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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 ability to get to the max fill rate.