GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which comes with GPU core speed of 1100 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 896 Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M385X, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X is quite a bit (about 133%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (133%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M385X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11000 (167%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.