GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this specific model. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (133%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be quite a bit (approximately 142%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29600 (142%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be much (about 177%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (177%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.