GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which has GPU clock speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1026 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is comprised of 192 SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 60096 (157%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be a little bit (about 9%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (9%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be quite a bit (approximately 227%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 video card could possibly record to its local memory per 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.