GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB vs GeForce 9600 GT 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, which has a clock speed of 650 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 65/55 nm design. It is comprised of 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 512MB		95 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB should perform a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		63360 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5760 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB is a little bit (about 18%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 320MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3824 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB is the winner, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.