GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7770, which features core clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7770 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 should be quite a bit (approximately 92%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (92%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 will be a lot (more or less 54%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (54%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.