GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. ATi has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this card. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs 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 6770 1GB		108 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB should be a little bit (more or less 15%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing 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 GSO 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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.