GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs GeForce 9600 GT 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, which comes with a clock frequency of 650 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 65/55 nm design. It is comprised of 64 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB should in theory be a small bit better than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5760 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB should be a little bit (more or less 18%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3824 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 140 (1%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.