GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which features clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 166 Watts (198%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 249600 (650%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be quite a bit (approximately 312%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 82400 (312%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be much (more or less 312%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.