GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTS 450 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, which has a clock frequency of 783 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 902 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 192 SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 450 1GB will be 0% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB should be just a bit (approximately 20%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video 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 amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.