GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R5 M255, which comes with a clock speed of 940 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 64-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon R5 M255 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (260%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is much (more or less 66%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R5 M255. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12400 (66%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB will be quite a bit (approximately 38%) better at AA than the Radeon R5 M255, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2880 (38%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.