GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 116 Watts (138%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (317%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a lot (more or less 167%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44000 (167%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record 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 core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.