GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, which features GPU clock speed of 650 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 96 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should theoretically be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB will be a little bit (about 18%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3800 (58%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.