GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1050 MHz on this model. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 61 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6870 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (133%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be a lot (about 62%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (62%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (177%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.