GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which has clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR4 memory. 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 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4850 2GB should theoretically be just a bit superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5952 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is much (approximately 25%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6200 (25%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB will be a small bit (more or less 4%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.