GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 91 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7870 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (860%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a lot (approximately 203%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53600 (203%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25400 (385%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.