GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which has clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		108 Watts
	Difference: 13 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6770 1GB should perform a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB is quite a bit (approximately 73%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (73%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6770 1GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (38%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.