GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which has a clock speed of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1425 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
Radeon R9 380 4G		190 Watts
	Difference: 106 Watts (126%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 380 4G should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (375%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G is quite a bit (more or less 312%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 82240 (312%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380 4G is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		31040 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are 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 higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.