GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6990, which comes with a clock speed of 830 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up 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 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 291 Watts (346%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6990, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 281600 (733%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be a lot (more or less 504%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 132960 (504%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is much (about 705%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 46520 (705%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.