GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with GPU clock speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 67 Watts (80%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 should be a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (250%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be quite a bit (approximately 91%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24000 (91%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22200 (336%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.