GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R5 M230, which features core clock speeds of 780 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 320 SPUs as well as 20 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should perform a lot faster than the Radeon R5 M230 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (260%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is a lot (more or less 100%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R5 M230. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15600 (100%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7280 (233%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.