GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GTX 470

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 470, which has a clock speed of 607 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 837 MHz. It also features a 320-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 448 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 40 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 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 131 Watts (156%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 470 should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 will be quite a bit (more or less 29%) better at texture 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 is much (more or less 268%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.