GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 260X, which features a core clock speed of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1625 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 129 Watts (112%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon R7 260X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 88384 (85%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X should be a lot (more or less 25%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12192 (25%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the Radeon R7 260X, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19456 (111%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.