GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 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 1GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB should be a lot (more or less 68%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8400 (68%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB will be a little bit (more or less 19%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range 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 of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.