GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which has clock speeds of 970 MHz on the GPU, and 1425 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
Radeon R9 380 2G		190 Watts
	Difference: 8 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 380 2G should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GTX 260 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 70512 (63%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G is a lot (more or less 195%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71776 (195%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380 2G is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14912 (92%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are 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 higher this number, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.