GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which comes with a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 800 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 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		108 Watts
	Difference: 13 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6770 1GB should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB is quite a bit (approximately 73%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (73%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6770 1GB is superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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.