GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce GTS 450

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTS 450, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 783 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 902 MHz on this particular model. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

The GeForce GTS 450 should theoretically perform a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB will be much (approximately 25%) faster with regards to 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%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.