GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 M260, which has 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 is comprised of 384 Stream Processors, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB should perform a lot faster than the Radeon R7 M260 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (140%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB is a lot (approximately 54%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R7 M260. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9240 (54%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		5720 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 880 (15%)

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 over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.