GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon HD 4650 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4650 512MB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 memory set to run at 500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		55 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
	Difference: 29 Watts (53%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so in theory they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 will be much (about 38%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (38%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 is superior to the Radeon HD 4650 512MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		4800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1800 (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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.