In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the HD i7 6700K and the 9600 GT are equal.

The 9600 GT has a 300 MHz higher core clock speed and 16 more Texture Mapping Units than the HD i7 6700K. This results in the 9600 GT providing 15.2 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 9600 GT has a 300 MHz higher core clock speed and 8 more Render Output Units than the HD i7 6700K. This results in the 9600 GT providing 7.6 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 HD i7 6700K was released over three years more recently than the 9600 GT, and so the HD i7 6700K 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 9600 GT has 1024 MB video memory, but the HD i7 6700K does not have an entry, so the two GPUs cannot be reliably compared in this area.

The HD i7 6700K has 24 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB has 64. However, the actual shader performance of the HD i7 6700K is 221 and the actual shader performance of the 9600 GT is 104. The HD i7 6700K having 117 better shader performance is not particularly notable, as altogether the 9600 GT performs better when taking into account other relevant data.

The HD i7 6700K transistor size technology is 51 nm (nanometers) smaller than the 9600 GT. This means that the HD i7 6700K is expected to run massively cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the 9600 GT. While they exhibit similar graphical performance, the HD i7 6700K should consume less power than the 9600 GT.

The HD i7 6700K requires 91 Watts to run and the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB requires 95 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the HD i7 6700K and a PSU with at least 400 Watts for the 9600 GT. The 9600 GT requires 4 Watts more than the HD i7 6700K to run. The difference is not significant enough for the 9600 GT to have a noticeably larger impact on your yearly electricity bills than the HD i7 6700K.