GeForce 8800 GT 1GB vs GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, which comes with a clock speed of 550 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also uses a 192-bit memory bus, and uses a 65 nm design. It is made up of 96 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 12 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8800 GT 1GB should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 1GB will be much (about 27%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (27%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 1GB is quite a bit (more or less 45%) better at AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3000 (45%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied 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 better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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.