GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this model. It features 800 SPUs as well as 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 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		108 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB, in theory, should be just a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB should be a small bit (approximately 15%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6770 1GB is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (38%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.