GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon R9 390X 8G

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which comes with clock speeds of 1050 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
Radeon R9 390X 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 191 Watts (227%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 390X 8G should be a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 345600 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G will be quite a bit (more or less 600%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 158400 (600%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G will be a lot (about 918%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 60600 (918%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

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