GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce GT 450 (OEM)

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 450 (OEM), which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 790 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also features 144 Stream Processors, 24 TAUs, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		106 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) is 67% faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB will be much (about 65%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 450 (OEM). (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12240 (65%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8560 (82%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.