Confused...

[hammyham]

I've been looking up video cards and am a bit confused about the core and memory clocks of a couple of cards.
For example, this card here is said to be rated at a core clock of 500mhz and a memory clock of 600mhz.
Now this card here is said to be rated at a core of 380mhz and a memory clock of 680.
This is where I get confused.
How come the 9600xt has a higher core clock than the 9800? I know the 9800 is 256bit, but i assumed the 9800 would have a higher core clock??

 

[cedjunior]

The difference in the core speed is due to the GPU's being different. The 9800 GPU has more features than the 9600 GPU, like for instance pixel pipelines. So, the 9800 GPU can work faster than the 9600 GPU because the extra features compensate for the lower clock speed. The 256bit part referes to the memory, not the GPU.