GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 260X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1625 MHz on this particular card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator 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

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be 85% faster than the Radeon R7 260X in general, because of its higher data rate. (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 quite a bit (about 25%) better at texture 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

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is quite a bit (approximately 111%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 260X, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.