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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 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Compare that to the GeForce GTS 450, which has a core clock speed of 783 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 902 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 192 SPUs, 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 a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB overall. (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 just a bit (about 20%) faster with regards to texture 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 will be a small bit (more or less 20%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

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