GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with clock speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 160 Watts (178%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be much (more or less 171%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53280 (171%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (about 171%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed 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 graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.