GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which has GPU clock speed of 900 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1375 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M280X should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 49600 (129%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is quite a bit (approximately 91%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24000 (91%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X should be much (about 118%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.