GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (84%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 is 167% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be a lot (about 285%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59200 (285%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be quite a bit (more or less 208%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21600 (208%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range 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 of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.