GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 480, which comes with a core clock speed of 700 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 924 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 480 SPUs, 60 Texture Address Units, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 166 Watts (198%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 480 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 139008 (362%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be quite a bit (about 59%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15600 (59%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be quite a bit (about 409%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

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