GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which has a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1026 MHz. It also uses a 192-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 192 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 82496 (516%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be a little bit (approximately 9%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (9%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is quite a bit (more or less 227%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.