GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R5 M255, which features a clock speed of 940 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 should be quite a bit (more or less 40%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R5 M255. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7600 (40%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 will be a small bit (about 14%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 920 (14%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.