GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which features core speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 69504 (121%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB will be much (more or less 140%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29200 (140%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (92%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.