GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which features core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1026 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB in general. (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 should be a small bit (more or less 9%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering 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 will be quite a bit (about 227%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.