GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be a lot (more or less 158%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (158%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20600 (312%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 output 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 max fill rate.