GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M390X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M390X should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X will be quite a bit (about 345%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71744 (345%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M390X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12736 (122%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.