GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs GeForce GTS 150

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTS 150, which comes with clock speeds of 740 MHz on the GPU, and 500 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
	Difference: 57 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTS 150 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 should be a lot (more or less 79%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20960 (79%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 should be quite a bit (more or less 79%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5240 (79%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.