GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce GTX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 675 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 336 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 76 Watts (90%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is 200% faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (200%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB is a lot (about 43%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11400 (43%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB is quite a bit (about 227%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and also able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15000 (227%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. 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 maximum fill rate.