GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 6770

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6770, which has core speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800 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 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon HD 6770		108 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6770 should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 will be a bit (approximately 15%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6770 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 in a second.

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