GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 5770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5770, which features a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5770 is 33% faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5770 is much (more or less 63%) better at texture filtering 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

The Radeon HD 5770 should be much (more or less 31%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.