GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1026 MHz on this particular model. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 40896 (71%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is quite a bit (about 38%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (38%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (108%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.