GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 116 Watts (138%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory be much better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (317%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be much (more or less 167%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44000 (167%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a lot (about 288%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.