GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which comes with core clock speeds of 772 MHz on the GPU, and 1002 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. 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 768MB		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 160 Watts (190%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 153984 (401%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is much (about 87%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23008 (87%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be quite a bit (more or less 461%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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