GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which comes with 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 is comprised of 896 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M385X will be 500% faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (500%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X is much (approximately 133%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (133%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M385X is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11000 (167%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.