GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270X, which features a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1400 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 270X should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (211%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be much (about 156%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48800 (156%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is much (about 208%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21600 (208%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.