GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 4770

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4770, which has a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 800 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 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 GT 1GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB is 13% faster than the Radeon HD 4770 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4770		51200 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4770 is a bit (about 15%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		24000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (15%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4770 is just a bit (more or less 15%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.