GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which features core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB will be 25% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB should be quite a bit (approximately 68%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be just a bit (approximately 19%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.