GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. ATi has set the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 memory is set to run at a frequency of 993 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 1GB is 10% faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is quite a bit (approximately 25%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6200 (25%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is superior to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, but only just. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.