GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce GTX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 675 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 336 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (78%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 460 2GB should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB will be a lot (more or less 21%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6600 (21%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB will be a lot (more or less 108%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (108%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.