In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GT 640 are very slightly better than the Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT Asus Magic HDMI 512MB Edition.

The GeForce GT 640 has a 302 MHz higher core clock speed and the same number of Texture Mapping Units as the 9600 GT. This results in the GeForce GT 640 providing 9.7 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GeForce GT 640 has a 302 MHz higher core clock speed than the 9600 GT and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the GeForce GT 640 providing 4.8 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GeForce GT 640 was released over three years more recently than the 9600 GT, and so the GeForce GT 640 is likely to have far better driver support, meaning it will be much more optimized and ultimately superior to the 9600 GT when running the latest games.

The GeForce GT 640 has 1536 MB more video memory than the 9600 GT, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GeForce GT 640 also has superior memory performance overall.

The GeForce GT 640 has 2.9 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the 9600 GT, which means that the memory performance of the GeForce GT 640 is marginally better than the 9600 GT.

The GeForce GT 640 has 384 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce 9600 GT Asus Magic HDMI 512MB Edition has 64. However, the actual shader performance of the GeForce GT 640 is 346 and the actual shader performance of the 9600 GT is 96. The GeForce GT 640 having 250 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GeForce GT 640 delivers a marginally smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the 9600 GT.

The GeForce GT 640 transistor size technology is 37 nm (nanometers) smaller than the 9600 GT. This means that the GeForce GT 640 is expected to run much cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the 9600 GT. While they exhibit similar graphical performance, the GeForce GT 640 should consume less power than the 9600 GT.

The GeForce GT 640 requires 65 Watts to run and the GeForce 9600 GT Asus Magic HDMI 512MB Edition requires 50 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 350 Watts for the GeForce GT 640 and a PSU with at least 350 Watts for the 9600 GT. The GeForce GT 640 requires 15 Watts more than the 9600 GT to run. The difference is not significant enough for the GeForce GT 640 to have a noticeably larger impact on your yearly electricity bills than the 9600 GT.