GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950, which has a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (122%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6950 should be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be much (more or less 126%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39200 (126%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be quite a bit (more or less 146%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (146%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.