GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M380, which has a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M380 should be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 will be quite a bit (about 92%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (92%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 is quite a bit (approximately 54%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (54%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.