GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs GeForce 9800 GT 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, which comes with clock speeds of 600 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 112 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 21 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB should be 260% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (260%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB is a lot (more or less 27%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (27%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB will be quite a bit (approximately 45%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3000 (45%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.