Compare any two graphics cards:

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTS 450

Intro

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB uses a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 64 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTS 450, which features core speeds of 783 MHz on the GPU, and 902 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 450 will be 0% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 128 (0%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 is a little bit (about 20%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4256 (20%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 is just a bit (more or less 20%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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

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GeForce 9600 GT 1GB

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GeForce GTS 450

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model	GeForce 9600 GT 1GB	GeForce GTS 450
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	Feb 2008	September 2010
Code Name	G94a/b	GF106
Memory	1024 MB	512 MB
Core Speed	650 MHz	783 MHz
Memory Speed	1800 MHz	3608 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	95 watts	106 watts
Bandwidth	57600 MB/sec	57728 MB/sec
Texel Rate	20800 Mtexels/sec	25056 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	10400 Mpixels/sec	12528 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	64	192
Texture Mapping Units	32	32
Render Output Units	16	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR5
Bus Width	256-bit	128-bit
Fab Process	65/55 nm	40 nm
Transistors	505 million	1170 million
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

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