GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 828 MHz on this specific card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 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 512MB		75 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB should in theory be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB should be much (approximately 95%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10112 (95%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB will be a small bit (about 3%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.