GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs GeForce GT 430 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 430 1GB, which comes with a core clock speed of 700 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 96 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 24 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB is 33% faster than the GeForce GT 430 1GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB should be much (about 136%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (136%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB should be a lot (more or less 136%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 430 1GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3800 (136%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 chip could possibly record to the local memory in a 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 called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.