GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) SPUs, 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 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4850 1GB should theoretically be a bit better than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 1GB is a little bit (approximately 20%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB will be just a bit (about 4%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.