GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 480, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 700 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 924 MHz on this particular model. It features 480 SPUs along with 60 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 166 Watts (198%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 480, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 161408 (1009%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be quite a bit (approximately 59%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15600 (59%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27000 (409%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.