GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which features GPU core speed of 625 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR4 RAM running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4850 2GB should in theory be a small bit superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5952 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB will be just a bit (approximately 20%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4200 (20%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 512MB is a small bit (more or less 4%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (4%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.