GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce GTS 450

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTS 450, which comes with a core clock speed of 783 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 902 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 192 SPUs, 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 384MB		84 Watts
GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTS 450 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 19328 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB should be a small bit (approximately 5%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1344 (5%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5928 (90%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 applied per second. This figure is worked out 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.