GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GTX 570

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 570, which has core speeds of 732 MHz on the GPU, and 950 MHz on the 1280 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 480 SPUs as well as 60 TAUs and 40 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
	Difference: 135 Watts (161%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 570 should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 113600 (296%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 will be a lot (about 66%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17520 (66%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 will be a lot (more or less 344%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22680 (344%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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 bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.