GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs Radeon R9 M275X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M275X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1125 MHz on this card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M275X		50 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M275X should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 33600 (88%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X is a lot (approximately 36%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (36%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M275X is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7800 (118%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few 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.