GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 174 Watts (151%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 295 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon R7 260X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 119776 (115%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 is quite a bit (more or less 50%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R7 260X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30560 (50%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 295 is superior to the Radeon R7 260X, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14656 (83%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.