GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1375 MHz on this card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 166 Watts (198%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (1000%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be much (about 220%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58080 (220%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few 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.