GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce GT 640 DDR3

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GT 640 DDR3, which has a clock speed of 900 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 1782 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 384 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		65 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GT 640 DDR3 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		57024 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 18624 (49%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 640 DDR3 is a bit (about 9%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		28800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 640 DDR3 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7800 (118%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.