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GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs GeForce GT 310

Intro

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 has a core clock frequency of 550 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 500 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 65 nm design. It is comprised of 96 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 12 ROPs.

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 310, which has core clock speeds of 589 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 RAM. It features 16 SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310 31 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 84 Watts
Difference: 53 Watts (171%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 will be quite a bit (approximately 460%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310 4712 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 21688 (460%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 should be much (about 180%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 310, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310 2356 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 4244 (180%)

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

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GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512

Amazon.com

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GeForce GT 310

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 GeForce GT 310
Manufacturer nVidia nVidia
Year September 2008 November 2009
Code Name G92 GT218
Memory 512 MB 512 MB
Core Speed 550 MHz 589 MHz
Memory Speed 1000 MHz 2000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 84 watts 31 watts
Bandwidth 16000 MB/sec 16000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 26400 Mtexels/sec 4712 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 6600 Mpixels/sec 2356 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 96 16
Texture Mapping Units 48 8
Render Output Units 12 4
Bus Type DDR2 DDR2
Bus Width 128-bit 64-bit
Fab Process 65 nm 40 nm
Transistors 754 million 260 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 2.0
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.1

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock 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 is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

GeForce GT 310

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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