GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce GTX 470

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 470, which features a GPU core clock speed of 607 MHz, and 1280 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 837 MHz through a 320-bit bus. It also features 448 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 40 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 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (139%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 470 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 76320 (133%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be just a bit (about 9%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2792 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13880 (133%)

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 moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

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