GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GT 220 GDDR3

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 1012 MHz on this specific card. It features 48 SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		58 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
	Difference: 26 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB is 19% faster than the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		32384 MB/sec
	Difference: 6016 (19%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB should be quite a bit (approximately 164%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		10000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16400 (164%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB is much (more or less 32%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		5000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (32%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.