GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5970, which has core speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1600 SPUs along with 160 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 199 Watts (209%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5970 should be 344% faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 198400 (344%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is much (more or less 1015%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 211200 (1015%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 82400 (792%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.