GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 4830 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, which has core speeds of 575 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units 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 4830 1GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is much (approximately 70%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (70%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is superior to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.