GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which has core clock speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 101 Watts (120%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 153600 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be a lot (more or less 236%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62400 (236%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be much (more or less 348%) better at AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23000 (348%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.