GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 4770

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4770, which comes with a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4770		80 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9600 GT 512MB should in theory be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4770 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4770		51200 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4770 should be a small bit (more or less 15%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		24000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (15%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4770 is just a bit (approximately 15%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (15%)

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 over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.