GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4730, which comes with GPU core speed of 700 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 640(128x5) Stream Processors, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4730 will be a small bit (approximately 8%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (8%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 512MB will be a lot (about 86%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4730, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (86%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.