GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which features a core clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so in theory they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should be quite a bit (about 152%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18800 (152%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 512MB is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.