GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GTX 470

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 470, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 607 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 837 MHz on this particular card. It features 448 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 40 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 131 Watts (156%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 470 is 249% faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 95520 (249%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is a lot (about 29%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7592 (29%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be quite a bit (about 268%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17680 (268%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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