GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB has a clock speed of 650 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 65/55 nm design. It features 96 SPUs, 48 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which comes with a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 4850 2GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB	Radeon HD 4850 2GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	October 2008	Jun 25, 2008
Code Name	G94a/b	RV770 PRO
Fab Process	65/55 nm	55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.0 x16
Memory	512 MB	2048 MB
Core Speed	650 MHz	625 MHz
Shader Speed	1625 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	900 MHz	993 MHz
Unified Shaders	96	800(160x5)
Texture Mapping Units	48	40
Render Output Units	16	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR4
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.0
Power (Max TDP)	90 watts	110 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.1
Bandwidth	57600 MB/sec	63552 MB/sec
Texel Rate	31200 Mtexels/sec	25000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	10400 Mpixels/sec	10000 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.