GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is much (about 158%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (158%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be a lot (approximately 312%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20600 (312%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.