GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, which has GPU clock speed of 550 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 memory set to run at 500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 96 Stream Processors, 48 TAUs, and 12 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB should be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (140%)

Texel Rate

Both cards have exactly the same texel fill rate, so in theory they should be equally good at at anisotropic filtering. (explain)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have the exact same pixel rate, so theoretically they should perform equally good at at AA, and be able to handle the same screen resolutions. (explain)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the 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 bandwidth is, 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 can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.