GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon R9 M275X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M275X, which has GPU core speed of 900 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M275X		50 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (90%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M275X should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X is quite a bit (approximately 73%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (73%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X should be a lot (more or less 38%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 in a second.

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