GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7850, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 860 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this specific card. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (55%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7850, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 will be much (more or less 108%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28640 (108%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20920 (317%)

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

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling 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 number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.