GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon R7 250X 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, which features GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 250X 2GB should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X 2GB will be quite a bit (approximately 28%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (28%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 250X 2GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (54%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 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 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 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.