GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce GTS 450 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 783 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 902 MHz on this specific card. It features 192 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 450 1GB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 19328 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB will be a bit (more or less 5%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1344 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB is much (approximately 90%) better at AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5928 (90%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.