GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTX 460

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 460, which comes with core speeds of 675 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 768 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 336 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (58%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 460 will be 50% faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 will be much (more or less 82%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17000 (82%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 is much (approximately 56%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5800 (56%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.