GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280, which features GPU clock speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 1792 Stream Processors, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 166 Watts (198%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 201600 (525%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be a lot (approximately 296%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 78096 (296%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be a lot (more or less 352%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23256 (352%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.