GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 480 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		63 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB should theoretically be just a bit better than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB should be just a bit (more or less 8%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (8%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		6400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (63%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.