GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

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 the exact same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 512MB should be a lot (approximately 68%) better at texture filtering 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

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 512MB is superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, but only just. (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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.