GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare those specs 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 works at a speed of 1026 MHz on this specific card. 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

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti should in theory be a lot superior to 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 will be a lot (approximately 38%) more effective at anisotropic filtering 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 screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is the winner, by far. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed 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 this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a 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 speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.