GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270X, which features core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 96 Watts (114%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270X should theoretically be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 163200 (1020%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is quite a bit (approximately 203%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53600 (203%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is much (about 385%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25400 (385%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.