GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1002 MHz on this particular card. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 48 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 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 160 Watts (190%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 153984 (401%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be much (more or less 87%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23008 (87%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be much (about 461%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.