GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 5770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5770, which comes with a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 5770		108 Watts
	Difference: 13 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5770 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5770		76800 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5770 is quite a bit (about 63%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5770		34000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13200 (63%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5770 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5770		13600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (31%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.