GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M380, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this particular card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M380, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 should be much (approximately 92%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (92%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M380 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (54%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.