GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 93 Watts (98%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5870 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be quite a bit (approximately 227%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47200 (227%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16800 (162%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.