GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB, which has GPU clock speed of 650 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 480 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		50 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB is quite a bit (about 69%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		15600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (69%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB is superior to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1400 (27%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per 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 worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.