GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GTS 450

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTS 450, which comes with clock speeds of 783 MHz on the GPU, and 902 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 192 SPUs as well as 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 1.5GB		84 Watts
GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTS 450 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 19328 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB is a small bit (more or less 5%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1344 (5%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.