GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5850, which comes with GPU core speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1440(288x5) Stream Processors, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5850 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be quite a bit (about 151%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31400 (151%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be much (about 123%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (123%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.