GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6970, which features a clock speed of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 118400 (206%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is a lot (approximately 306%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63680 (306%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (approximately 171%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17760 (171%)

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 transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.