GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which has GPU core speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB should be 9% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 4608 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 512MB will be a lot (about 95%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10112 (95%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 256MB is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 288 (3%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.