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GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon R9 M275X

Intro

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB uses a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 96 SPUs as well as 48 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M275X, which comes with clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M275X		50 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (80%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M275X should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X should be a bit (about 15%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (15%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X is a lot (about 38%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (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

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GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB

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Radeon R9 M275X

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB	Radeon R9 M275X
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	October 2008	May 1 2014
Code Name	G94a/b	Venus XTX
Memory	512 MB	2048 MB
Core Speed	650 MHz	900 MHz
Memory Speed	1800 MHz	4500 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	90 watts	50 watts
Bandwidth	57600 MB/sec	72000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	31200 Mtexels/sec	36000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	10400 Mpixels/sec	14400 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	96	640
Texture Mapping Units	48	40
Render Output Units	16	16
Bus Type	GDDR3	GDDR5
Bus Width	256-bit	128-bit
Fab Process	65/55 nm	28 nm
Transistors	505 million	(Unknown) million
Bus	PCIe x16 2.0	PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

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