GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which has a core clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1026 MHz. It also uses a 192-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 192 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 26 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB will be a small bit (about 8%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (8%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write 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 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 rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.