GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which has core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 116 Watts (138%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is quite a bit (more or less 167%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44000 (167%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be much (more or less 288%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19000 (288%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

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