GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 993 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) 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)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5952 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB is a bit (more or less 20%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4200 (20%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB will be a little bit (more or less 4%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 in one second.

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