GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs GeForce 9600 GT 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, which has GPU clock speed of 650 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 64 SPUs, 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) 640MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5760 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB should be a small bit (more or less 18%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3824 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.