GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce 9800 GTX+

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9800 GTX+, which features a clock speed of 738 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 1100 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 128 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (61%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GTX+ should be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		70400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ is much (approximately 51%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16032 (51%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GTX+ is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1408 (14%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.