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GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

The GeForce 9600 GT 512MB features core clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 64 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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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

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 should be 167% faster 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 much (about 285%) faster with regards to texture filtering 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 is quite a bit (approximately 208%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and also should be capable of handling 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

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GeForce 9600 GT 512MB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 7870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 9600 GT 512MB Radeon HD 7870
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year Feb 2008 March 2012
Code Name G94a/b Pitcairn XT
Memory 512 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 650 MHz 1000 MHz
Memory Speed 1800 MHz 4800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 95 watts 175 watts
Bandwidth 57600 MB/sec 153600 MB/sec
Texel Rate 20800 Mtexels/sec 80000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 10400 Mpixels/sec 32000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 64 1280
Texture Mapping Units 32 80
Render Output Units 16 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 65/55 nm 28 nm
Transistors 505 million 2800 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.2

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most 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 worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7870

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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