GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which comes with a clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

F.E.A.R. 2

Settings:	Maximum Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Unknown (Source)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		61 FPS
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		31 FPS
	Difference: 30 FPS (97%)

Fallout 3

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		40 FPS
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		32 FPS
	Difference: 8 FPS (25%)

Fallout 3

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1680x1050
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Charts Test Rig (Source)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		55 FPS
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		50 FPS
	Difference: 5 FPS (10%)

Far Cry 2

Settings:	Very High Qualty
AA:	none
AF:	none
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Intel Core i7-920,3 x 2 GB Ram,Windows Vista Ultimate 32 Bit SP1 (Source)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		50 FPS
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		33 FPS
	Difference: 17 FPS (52%)

Left4Dead

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		54 FPS
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		31 FPS
	Difference: 23 FPS (74%)

Left4Dead

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Charts Test Rig (Source)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		59 FPS
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		38 FPS
	Difference: 21 FPS (55%)

Tom Clancy's Endwar

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		24 FPS
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		15 FPS
	Difference: 9 FPS (60%)

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1680x1050
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Charts Test Rig (Source)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		29 FPS
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		27 FPS
	Difference: 2 FPS (7%)

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Radeon HD 4850 512MB wins

(Based entirely on the benchmarks listed above)

When combining all game benchmark scores on this page together, the Radeon HD 4850 512MB wins overall, by 124 FPS. Please note that we do not have the results of every benchmark ever done for these cards, so the results may differ wildly in different games.

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		396 FPS
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		272 FPS
	Difference: 124 FPS (46%)

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB should theoretically be a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5952 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB is a little bit (more or less 20%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4200 (20%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (4%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.