GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which features a clock speed of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1425 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
Radeon R9 380 2G		190 Watts
	Difference: 106 Watts (126%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 380 2G should in theory be much better than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (1040%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G will be much (about 312%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 82240 (312%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G will be quite a bit (about 370%) better at AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24440 (370%)

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: Memory 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 worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.