GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 M260X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 825 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 384 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon R7 M260X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128384 (201%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be much (approximately 150%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 M260X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29608 (150%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30456 (461%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the 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 sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.