GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M270X, which comes with clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M270X should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB will be a little bit (more or less 8%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M270X. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (8%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X should be just a bit (approximately 12%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.