GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 993 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 69504 (121%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be a lot (more or less 140%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29200 (140%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be a lot (approximately 92%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (92%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.