GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon R9 390X 8G

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which features a clock frequency of 1050 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2816 SPUs, 176 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 390X 8G should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GTX 260 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G should be a lot (approximately 401%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 147936 (401%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390X 8G is superior to the GeForce GTX 260, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics 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 ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.