GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which features core speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1026 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is 157% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 60096 (157%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be a little bit (about 9%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (9%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be a lot (about 227%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15000 (227%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 are applied in one second. This figure 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

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