GeForce 9600 GTX vs ATI Radeon HD 3870
Primary details
GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.
| Place in the ranking | 991 | not rated |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | not in top-100 |
| Cost-effectiveness evaluation | 0.04 | no data |
| Power efficiency | 0.94 | no data |
| Architecture | TeraScale (2005−2013) | Tesla (2006−2010) |
| GPU code name | RV670 | G92 |
| Market segment | Desktop | Desktop |
| Release date | 19 November 2007 (16 years ago) | 27 May 2009 (15 years ago) |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $269 | no data |
Cost-effectiveness evaluation
Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.
Detailed specifications
General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.
| Pipelines / CUDA cores | 320 | 96 |
| Core clock speed | 777 MHz | 580 MHz |
| Number of transistors | 666 million | 754 million |
| Manufacturing process technology | 55 nm | 65 nm |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 106 Watt | 140 Watt |
| Texture fill rate | 12.43 | 27.84 |
| Floating-point processing power | 0.4973 TFLOPS | 0.2784 TFLOPS |
| ROPs | 16 | 16 |
| TMUs | 16 | 48 |
Form factor & compatibility
Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).
| Interface | PCIe 2.0 x16 | PCIe 2.0 x16 |
| Length | 241 mm | 267 mm |
| Width | 2-slot | 2-slot |
| Supplementary power connectors | 1x 6-pin | 1x 6-pin |
VRAM capacity and type
Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.
| Memory type | GDDR4 | GDDR3 |
| Maximum RAM amount | 512 MB | 512 MB |
| Memory bus width | 256 Bit | 256 Bit |
| Memory clock speed | 1126 MHz | 700 MHz |
| Memory bandwidth | 72.06 GB/s | 44.8 GB/s |
Connectivity and outputs
Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.
| Display Connectors | 2x DVI, 1x S-Video | 2x DVI, 1x S-Video |
API compatibility
List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.
| DirectX | 10.1 (10_1) | 11.1 (10_0) |
| Shader Model | 4.1 | 4.0 |
| OpenGL | 3.3 | 3.3 |
| OpenCL | N/A | 1.1 |
| Vulkan | N/A | N/A |
| CUDA | - | 1.1 |
Pros & cons summary
| Recency | 19 November 2007 | 27 May 2009 |
| Chip lithography | 55 nm | 65 nm |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 106 Watt | 140 Watt |
ATI HD 3870 has a 18.2% more advanced lithography process, and 32.1% lower power consumption.
9600 GTX, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 1 year.
We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 3870 and GeForce 9600 GTX. We've got no test results to judge.
Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.
Comparisons with similar GPUs
We selected several comparisons of graphics cards with performance close to those reviewed, providing you with more options to consider.
