GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce GTS 450

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTS 450, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 783 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 902 MHz on this particular model. It features 192 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 450 is 0% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 128 (0%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should be much (approximately 25%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6144 (25%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 should be just a bit (approximately 20%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2128 (20%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.