GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, which comes with a core clock speed of 550 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also features a 192-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 65 nm design. It features 96 SPUs, 48 TAUs, 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 384MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (140%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB is a lot (more or less 200%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (200%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB is superior to the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out 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 higher the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.