GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which features core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 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 1.5GB		84 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 91 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 should theoretically be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be much (approximately 203%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53600 (203%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.