GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce GTX 1060 3GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, which comes with clock speeds of 1506 MHz on the GPU, and 2000 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1152 SPUs along with 72 TAUs and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		120 Watts
	Difference: 36 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		196608 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 158208 (412%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should be a lot (about 311%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		108432 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 82032 (311%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should be a lot (about 995%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		72288 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 65688 (995%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.