GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M230, which comes with a clock frequency of 780 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB will be 140% faster than the Radeon R5 M230 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (140%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB is much (about 69%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R5 M230. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (69%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB will be a lot (approximately 112%) better at AA than the Radeon R5 M230, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.