GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1125 MHz on this particular card. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M270X should be a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X is much (about 39%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8200 (39%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X is a bit (about 12%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (12%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.