GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which has a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also features a 512-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 191 Watts (227%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 390 8G should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 345600 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G is a lot (more or less 506%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 133600 (506%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G will be much (approximately 870%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 57400 (870%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.