GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 480, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 700 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 924 MHz on this specific card. It features 480 SPUs along with 60 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 166 Watts (198%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 480, in theory, should be a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 161408 (1009%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be quite a bit (more or less 59%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15600 (59%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be much (more or less 409%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27000 (409%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of 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.