GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6870, which has a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1120 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

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

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6870 should be a lot 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 much (about 142%) better at 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 a lot (more or less 177%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and able to handle higher resolutions better. (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 megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.