GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GTX 460 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, which features core clock speeds of 675 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 336 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 76 Watts (90%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (200%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB should be a lot (approximately 43%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11400 (43%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 1GB is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15000 (227%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.