GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs GeForce GTS 450 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, which comes with clock speeds of 783 MHz on the GPU, and 902 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTS 450 1GB should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 19328 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB is a bit (about 5%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1344 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB will be a lot (more or less 90%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record 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 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.