GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs GeForce 9600 GT 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, which features clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 64 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) should theoretically be a small bit superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 4480 (8%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) will be quite a bit (approximately 100%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20800 (100%)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have exactly the same pixel rate, so theoretically they should perform equally good at at full screen anti-aliasing, and be capable of handling the same resolutions. (explain)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen 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 by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.