GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 4670 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4670 512MB, which comes with clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		70 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB should in theory be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 4670 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB is a small bit (more or less 10%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4670 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB is the winner, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		6000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 600 (10%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.