GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with GPU core speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1120 Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6870 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (133%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be much (about 142%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29600 (142%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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