Compare any two graphics cards:
VS

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB makes use of a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 64 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which features a clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB 75 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB 95 Watts
Difference: 20 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB 57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB 52992 MB/sec
Difference: 4608 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB will be a lot (approximately 95%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB 20800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB 10688 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 10112 (95%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB is just a bit (about 3%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB 10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB 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

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

Display Specifications

Hide Specifications

Model GeForce 9600 GT 1GB Radeon HD 3850 256MB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year Feb 2008 Nov 19, 2007
Code Name G94a/b RV670 PRO
Memory 1024 MB 256 MB
Core Speed 650 MHz 668 MHz
Memory Speed 1800 MHz 1656 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 95 watts 75 watts
Bandwidth 57600 MB/sec 52992 MB/sec
Texel Rate 20800 Mtexels/sec 10688 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 10400 Mpixels/sec 10688 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 64 320(64x5)
Texture Mapping Units 32 16
Render Output Units 16 16
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR3
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 65/55 nm 55 nm
Transistors 505 million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Comments

Be the first to leave a comment!

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*

WordPress Anti Spam by WP-SpamShield