GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs GeForce 9800 GTX

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce 9800 GTX, which has clock speeds of 675 MHz on the GPU, and 1100 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GTX, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX will be much (approximately 108%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (108%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GTX is the winner, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (4%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.