GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which comes with a core clock frequency of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1425 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
Radeon R9 380 4G		190 Watts
	Difference: 106 Watts (126%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 380 4G should be 1040% faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (1040%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G is a lot (more or less 312%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 82240 (312%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380 4G is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.