GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M270X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this particular card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M270X should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 33600 (88%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X is a little bit (approximately 10%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2600 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M270X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5000 (76%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.