GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GT 640 DDR3

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GT 640 DDR3, which has core speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1782 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM. It features 384 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		65 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 640 DDR3 will be 49% faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		57024 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 18624 (49%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 640 DDR3 will be a bit (more or less 9%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		28800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 640 DDR3 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.