GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 240, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 730 MHz. The DDR3 memory works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 54 Watts (180%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB should be a lot faster than the Radeon R7 240 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB should be a lot (more or less 81%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R7 240. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11800 (81%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB is the winner, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 760 (13%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.