GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 260X, which has a clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1625 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 260X is 81% faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 46400 (81%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X should be quite a bit (more or less 83%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28000 (83%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X should be much (more or less 83%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.