GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (37%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7850 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is much (about 165%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34240 (165%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.