GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) vs GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, which uses a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 96 SPUs as well as 48 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		135 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) is 8% faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		62080 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 4480 (8%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) will be a lot (approximately 33%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G92)		41600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (33%)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have the exact same pixel fill rate, so in theory they should perform equally good at at FSAA, and be capable of handling the same resolutions. (explain)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. 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.