GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4730, which has GPU clock speed of 700 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4730 will be a little bit (more or less 8%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (8%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (86%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at 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 video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.