GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GT 420

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 420, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 700 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 48 SPUs as well as 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 420 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB should be a lot (approximately 371%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20800 (371%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB will be a lot (more or less 136%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 420, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3800 (136%)

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 (measured in megabytes 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. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.