GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270X, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 96 Watts (114%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 270X should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (367%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is quite a bit (more or less 203%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53600 (203%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be quite a bit (about 385%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.