GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which comes with GPU core speed of 772 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1002 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 512 Stream Processors, 64 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 149 Watts (157%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 134784 (234%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be much (about 138%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28608 (138%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is quite a bit (more or less 256%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26656 (256%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 potential to get to the max fill rate.