GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7770, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this model. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7770 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 is quite a bit (more or less 92%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (92%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7770 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 fill rate is also dependant on many 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.