GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce GT 420

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 420, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 700 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this card. It features 48 SPUs as well as 8 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (80%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 420 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should be a lot (about 457%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25600 (457%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB will be quite a bit (approximately 271%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 420, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7600 (271%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.