GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M270X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this card. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M270X should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 33600 (88%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X should be a small bit (approximately 10%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2600 (10%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X should be quite a bit (more or less 76%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5000 (76%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 worked out by multiplying the total number 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.