GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which comes with a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 93 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 390 8G should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTX 260 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 272112 (243%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G should be quite a bit (about 334%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 123136 (334%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390 8G is superior to the GeForce GTX 260, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 47872 (297%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels 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 clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.