GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs GeForce 9800 GT 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, which makes use of a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 600 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 112 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB should be much (approximately 62%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (62%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB will be just a bit (approximately 8%) better at AA than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (8%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.