GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 480, which has core speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 924 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM. 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 384MB		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 166 Watts (198%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 480 should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 139008 (362%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be a lot (about 59%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15600 (59%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be quite a bit (more or less 409%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 per second.

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