GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 M260X, which comes with GPU clock speed of 825 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 384 Stream Processors, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 970 should be 250% quicker than the Radeon R7 M260X in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (250%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is quite a bit (more or less 452%) better at AF than the Radeon R7 M260X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 89400 (452%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 60600 (918%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 video card can possibly record to the 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.