GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 4670 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4670 512MB, which comes with clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		70 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, in theory, should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4670 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB will be a bit (approximately 10%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4670 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (10%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB should be just a bit (approximately 10%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4670 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		6000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 600 (10%)

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 transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.