GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

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

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7870 should be a lot faster than 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 is 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 running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, 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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.