GeForce FX 5600 Ultra vs Radeon R9 M295X Mac Edition

Place in the ranking	383	1480
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Power efficiency	3.67	no data
Architecture	GCN 3.0 (2014−2019)	Rankine (2003−2005)
GPU code name	Amethyst	NV31
Market segment	Laptop	Desktop
Release date	23 November 2014 (10 years ago)	17 March 2003 (21 year ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	no data	$199

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

no data

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores	2048	no data
Core clock speed	850 MHz	400 MHz
Number of transistors	5,000 million	80 million
Manufacturing process technology	28 nm	130 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	250 Watt	no data
Texture fill rate	108.8	1.600
Floating-point processing power	3.482 TFLOPS	no data
ROPs	32	4
TMUs	128	4

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Interface	MXM-B (3.0)	AGP 8x
Length	no data	191 mm
Width	no data	1-slot
Supplementary power connectors	no data	1x Molex

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory type	GDDR5	DDR
Maximum RAM amount	4 GB	128 MB
Memory bus width	256 Bit	128 Bit
Memory clock speed	1362 MHz	400 MHz
Memory bandwidth	174.3 GB/s	12.8 GB/s

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors

No outputs

1x DVI, 1x VGA, 1x S-Video

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX	12 (12_0)	9.0a
Shader Model	6.3	no data
OpenGL	4.6	1.5 (2.1)
OpenCL	2.0	N/A
Vulkan	1.2.131	N/A

Gaming performance

Let's see how good the compared graphics cards are for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in FPS.

Pros & cons summary

Performance score	13.39	0.04
Recency	23 November 2014	17 March 2003
Maximum RAM amount	4 GB	128 MB
Chip lithography	28 nm	130 nm

R9 M295X Mac Edition has a 33375% higher aggregate performance score, an age advantage of 11 years, a 3100% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 364.3% more advanced lithography process.

The Radeon R9 M295X Mac Edition is our recommended choice as it beats the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra in performance tests.

Be aware that Radeon R9 M295X Mac Edition is a notebook card while GeForce FX 5600 Ultra is a desktop one.

Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.