GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which features core speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M280X should be 53% faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 30400 (53%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is quite a bit (approximately 142%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29600 (142%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is much (approximately 38%) better at AA than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

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