GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon R7 250X 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, which comes with clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 250X 2GB should perform much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X 2GB should be quite a bit (about 28%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (28%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X 2GB should be quite a bit (more or less 54%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.