GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GTS 450 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, which comes with a core clock speed of 783 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 902 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 192 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is 50% faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 19328 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB should be just a bit (more or less 5%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1344 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB is a lot (approximately 90%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip 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 Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.