GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which features a core clock speed of 860 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (37%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7850 will be 167% faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 will be quite a bit (approximately 165%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34240 (165%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17120 (165%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could 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 colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.