GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 4830 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 575 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is much (more or less 70%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4830 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (70%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (13%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.