GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 850 MHz on this card. It features 336 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (89%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is just a bit (about 17%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (17%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is quite a bit (more or less 100%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (100%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.