GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 660, which has core speeds of 980 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 960 SPUs as well as 80 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 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 660 will be 276% faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 105792 (276%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be much (more or less 197%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52000 (197%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16920 (256%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.