GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5830, which comes with core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (94%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5830 should theoretically be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be quite a bit (more or less 44%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (44%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (23%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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 potential to reach the max fill rate.