GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which has GPU clock speed of 625 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 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 4850 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 1GB should in theory perform a little bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5952 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is quite a bit (more or less 25%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6200 (25%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is the winner, but only just. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.