GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB uses a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 64 SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which features a core clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 3870 1GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce 9600 GT 1GB	Radeon HD 3870 1GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	Feb 2008	Nov 19, 2007
Code Name	G94a/b	RV670 XT
Fab Process	65/55 nm	55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x
Memory	1024 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	650 MHz	775 MHz
Shader Speed	1625 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	900 MHz	1125 MHz
Unified Shaders	64	320(64x5)
Texture Mapping Units	32	16
Render Output Units	16	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR4
Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.0
Power (Max TDP)	95 watts	106 watts
Shader Model	4.0	4.1
Bandwidth	57600 MB/sec	72000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	20800 Mtexels/sec	12400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	10400 Mpixels/sec	12400 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.