GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (44%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7850 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be quite a bit (about 76%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23840 (76%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be a lot (about 165%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.