GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, which makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 550 MHz. The DDR2 RAM is set to run at a speed of 500 MHz on this specific card. It features 96 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 12 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 is quite a bit (approximately 200%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (200%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (50%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.