GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 580, which has GPU clock speed of 772 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1002 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 512 Stream Processors, 64 TAUs, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 160 Watts (190%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 580 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 153984 (401%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be quite a bit (more or less 87%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23008 (87%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30456 (461%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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