GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon R9 390X 8G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1050 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific card. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
Radeon R9 390X 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 73 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 390X 8G should be 243% faster than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 272112 (243%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G is a lot (approximately 346%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 143328 (346%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G will be a lot (more or less 317%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 51072 (317%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.