GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs GeForce 9600 GT 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 650 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 65/55 nm design. It features 64 SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB should in theory be just a bit superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5760 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB is a little bit (about 18%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3824 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB is superior to the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 140 (1%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.