GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon R5 M255 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (260%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should be quite a bit (more or less 66%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R5 M255. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12400 (66%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2880 (38%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.