GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare that 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 made up of 896 Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R7 260X should be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 46400 (81%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is a lot (about 97%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30400 (97%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 260X is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (69%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.