GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1120 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 61 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 is 133% faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be a lot (approximately 62%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (62%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be a lot (about 177%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant 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 max fill rate.