GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon R9 M275X

Intro

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB uses a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 96 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M275X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1125 MHz on this particular model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.