GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which comes with clock 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 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB should theoretically be just a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5952 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB is a bit (about 20%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4200 (20%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 512MB will be a little bit (more or less 4%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (4%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.