GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 4830 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, which comes with GPU core speed of 575 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB will be a small bit (about 13%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB is the winner, but only just. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. 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.