GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which comes with core speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB will be 9% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 4608 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should be a lot (approximately 192%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20512 (192%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 1GB will be a small bit (about 3%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 288 (3%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.