GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M395X, which comes with a core clock frequency of 723 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M395X should be 178% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X is much (more or less 345%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71744 (345%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M395X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12736 (122%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.