GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which features a GPU core clock speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 166 Watts (198%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 is 358% faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (358%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be quite a bit (about 220%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58080 (220%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21560 (327%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 can be processed in one 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 better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.