GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M255, which has a GPU core clock speed of 940 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320 SPUs, 20 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon R5 M255 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (140%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB should be much (approximately 40%) better at AF than the Radeon R5 M255. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7600 (40%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 will be a bit (more or less 14%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 920 (14%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's 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 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its 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 speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.