GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 4770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4770, which has clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. 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)

Radeon HD 4770		80 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 4770 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should be quite a bit (approximately 30%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4770. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4770		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (30%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4770 should be a bit (approximately 15%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 processed in a second.

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