GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 5770

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5770, which comes with core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 5770		108 Watts
	Difference: 13 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5770 is 33% faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5770		76800 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5770 should be a lot (approximately 63%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5770		34000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13200 (63%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5770 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5770		13600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 output 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 potential to reach the maximum fill rate.