GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M255, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 940 MHz. The DDR3 memory runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 will be much (more or less 40%) better at AF than the Radeon R5 M255. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7600 (40%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 should be just a bit (more or less 14%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 920 (14%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.