GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with core speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 67 Watts (80%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6870 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (250%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be much (about 91%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24000 (91%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be much (about 336%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.