GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 260X, which has core clock speeds of 1100 MHz on the GPU, and 1625 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (37%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R7 260X should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 65600 (171%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X should be a lot (about 133%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (133%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R7 260X is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11000 (167%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.