GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1100 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 896 Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M385X should be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X is much (about 196%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40800 (196%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M385X is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (69%)

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 transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high 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 texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.