GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB, which comes with core clock speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 768 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 96 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 12 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 768MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 37 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB is 200% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (200%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB will be quite a bit (about 206%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17760 (206%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB is quite a bit (more or less 53%) better at AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2280 (53%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.