GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7770, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this model. It features 640 SPUs as well as 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 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7770 should be 88% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 33600 (88%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 should be a lot (approximately 52%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (52%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 is quite a bit (more or less 142%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9400 (142%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.