GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M230, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 780 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 320 Stream Processors, 20 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so theoretically they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 should be much (more or less 69%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R5 M230. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (69%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3480 (112%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.