"Better" is usually measured in 3D gaming context. (The advertising server
used on this page, is currently slowing things down. I had to wait a
minute
or two for the page to render. Reminds me of being on dialup at 1200
baud.)
The 9600GT might be a little faster, but I couldn't really look at enough
charts to say for sure.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...-charts-2009-high-quality/Far-Cry-2,1321.html
They say here, the 4670 is about the same as a 9600GSO.
http://www.gpureview.com/Radeon-HD-4670-card-579.html
The HD 4670 (RV730) has UVD 2.2 for video decoding, as mentioned here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder
The 9600GT has VP2 video decoding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_PureVideo
Note that the video decoders don't accelerate any arbitrary
video types (because code must be created for each format).
They're intended for popular video formats which
might exist on DVD or Bluray discs. If you have some favorite
format, it is going to take a lot more research to figure out
whether it is supported in hardware. Also, the "driver" if you
will, for video, is part of the player application. So if you
want the "acceleration" feature, you get it when you buy
"PowerDVD" or the like. The acceleration is not exposed in a
general way, for Windows to use. At least, not that I've been
able to determine.
(Announcement of VP2 support)
http://www.cyberlink.com/eng/press_room/view_1365.html
(Announcement of UVD support)
http://www.cyberlink.com/eng/press_room/view_1367.html
(Announcement of UVD2 support)
http://docs.cyberlink.com/eng/press_room/view_1756.html
So when you're buying a video card with video acceleration
in hardware as an objective, you only really know for sure,
when using the Task Manager while playing your movie. It
may not be possible to verify in advance with any certainty.
A lot of people get to see the "software" decoder used
instead, and the CPU utilization ends up higher.
WinXP 32 bit has a limited address space available. Out of
that address space, comes room for PCI and PCI Express buses,
as well as the system memory.
If there isn't room for it all, they shave the top off the
system memory. If you don't really need a 1GB video card,
a 512MB card may allow more of your 4GB purchase of RAM
to be used. If you have a tiny complement of system RAM,
it might not make any difference at all.
For example, my system has 2x1GB sticks, and a 1GB video
card would not affect me (I could continue to use all of
my 2GB total memory). If I installed my 2x2GB memory kit
in its place, then I'd see 2.75GB declared as free, when
running WinXP 32 bit and the 1GB video card. The loss would
be 1GB for the PCI Express video card, plus 0.25GB for the
PCI bus odds and ends. Bus allocations tend to be done in
crude 0.25GB blocks of address space. My 2.75GB number
is just a rough guess - some BIOS do stupid things.
There is one video card on the market which has 4GB
of memory on board. I'm still waiting for some joker
to plug it into a WinXP 32 bit system, just to see
what happens
Paul