GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 5670

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5670, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 400(80x5) SPUs along with 20 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
	Difference: 29 Watts (48%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5670 should in theory be a little bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is much (more or less 101%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15700 (101%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB will be quite a bit (approximately 68%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5670, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4200 (68%)

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 information (counted in megabytes 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 its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. 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 also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.