GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs GeForce 9800 GX2

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce 9800 GX2, which features GPU clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 128 Stream Processors, 64 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 GT 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 102 Watts (107%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a bit (about 269%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56000 (269%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (85%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.