GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6870, which has a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, 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

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6870 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in general. (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 (more or less 142%) faster with regards to texture 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 quite a bit (about 177%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and able to handle higher screen 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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.