GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 260X, which comes with a core clock speed of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1625 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 260X should in theory be much faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 33600 (48%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is a lot (about 43%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (43%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is a lot (about 63%) better at AA than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (63%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.