GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this particular model. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 166 Watts (198%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (358%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be quite a bit (more or less 220%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58080 (220%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be much (approximately 327%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.