GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which has clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs 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 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 116 Watts (138%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 should be a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (317%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is a lot (more or less 167%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44000 (167%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be much (approximately 288%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 the video card can 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 colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.