GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB

Intro

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB uses a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this model. It features 96 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB, which features a clock speed of 650 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 480 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.