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GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTS 450

Intro

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB features clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 64 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTS 450, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 783 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 902 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 192 Stream Processors, 32 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

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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 should perform just a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 should be a 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

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is a better choice, though only just barely. (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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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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

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