GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4730, which comes with GPU core speed of 700 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

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 the exact same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should be much (more or less 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

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is a better choice, and very much so. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.