GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7970, which features a core clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 166 Watts (198%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 225600 (588%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be quite a bit (approximately 348%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 92000 (348%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be much (more or less 348%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23000 (348%)

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 transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.