GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GTX 460

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 460, which comes with a core clock frequency of 675 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 192-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 336 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 is much (more or less 43%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11400 (43%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (145%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the 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 ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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 get to the max fill rate.