GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which has core clock speeds of 772 MHz on the GPU, and 1002 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 512 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 160 Watts (190%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 153984 (401%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be much (about 87%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23008 (87%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.