GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280X, which features GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 166 Watts (198%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 280X should be a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 249600 (650%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a lot (about 312%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 82400 (312%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be much (approximately 312%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20600 (312%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. 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 better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.