GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon R9 M370X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M370X, which comes with a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M370X should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M370X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 33600 (88%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M370X will be much (about 21%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M370X		32000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (21%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M370X should be quite a bit (approximately 94%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 M370X		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6200 (94%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.