GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which features clock speeds of 970 MHz on the GPU, and 1425 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs along with 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 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon R9 380 2G		190 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (111%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 380 2G should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (217%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G should be much (approximately 248%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 77440 (248%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380 2G is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20640 (198%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 high resolutions.

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

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