GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4730, which features core speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (56%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB will be quite a bit (about 39%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4730. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (39%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is a lot (more or less 86%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4730, and able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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