GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 480, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 700 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 924 MHz on this 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 768MB		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 166 Watts (198%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 480 is 362% faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be a lot (approximately 59%) better at AF 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%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB, and able to handle 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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.