GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M230, which features a clock speed of 780 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 320 SPUs, 20 TAUs, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 will be much (about 69%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R5 M230. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (69%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 is a lot (about 112%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R5 M230, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3480 (112%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.