GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce GT 230

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 230, which has core clock speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 1536 MB of DDR3 RAM. It features 32 SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB will be much (about 200%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (200%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (50%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.