GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7770, which has GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7770 should be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 will be much (about 92%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (92%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 is quite a bit (about 54%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (54%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.