GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 4830 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 575 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB should be just a bit (about 13%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (13%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB is a bit (about 13%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (13%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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