GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs GeForce 9800 GTX+

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 9800 GTX+, which has clock speeds of 738 MHz on the GPU, and 1100 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (53%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GTX+ should be a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		70400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ will be quite a bit (about 127%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26432 (127%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ will be just a bit (more or less 14%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1408 (14%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 in a second.

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