GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which has clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should in theory be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is a lot (more or less 192%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20512 (192%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB should be just a bit (about 3%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.