GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs GeForce 9600 GT 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, which features GPU clock speed of 650 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 64 Stream Processors, 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 1GB		95 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5760 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB should be a bit (approximately 18%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3824 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB is a little bit (more or less 1%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.