GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which features a clock speed of 825 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is a bit (approximately 18%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB will be much (approximately 154%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (154%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.