GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M380, which comes with GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M380 will be 67% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 will be much (approximately 92%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (92%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 will be a lot (about 54%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could 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 colour 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.