GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 M260, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 715 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 384 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon R7 M260 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 176384 (1102%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be quite a bit (about 188%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R7 M260. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32248 (188%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		5720 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31336 (548%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.