GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 512MB should be a lot (more or less 68%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8400 (68%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB will be just a bit (approximately 19%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (19%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. 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 is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.