GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 260X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1100 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1625 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 896 SPUs, 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 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 121 Watts (105%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 280 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon R7 260X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 37696 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X should be a lot (about 28%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13440 (28%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 is a bit (approximately 9%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 260X, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1664 (9%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.