GeForce 9800 GTX+ vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 260X will be 48% quicker than the GeForce 9800 GTX+ in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is much (approximately 30%) better at AF than the GeForce 9800 GTX+. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14368 (30%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X should be a lot (about 49%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GTX+, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5792 (49%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be 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 the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.