GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon R9 M275X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M275X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this model. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M275X		50 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (80%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M275X will be 25% faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X is a bit (more or less 15%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (15%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X is a lot (about 38%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (38%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.