GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GTX 570

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 570, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 732 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 950 MHz on this particular card. It features 480 SPUs as well as 60 Texture Address Units and 40 ROPs.

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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 570 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB in general. (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 much (approximately 66%) more effective at AF 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 should be much (approximately 344%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.