GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which has a GPU core clock speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6970 should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 118400 (206%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is quite a bit (about 306%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63680 (306%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit (approximately 171%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17760 (171%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.