GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon R9 M275X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M275X, which has a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M275X		50 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 152 Watts (304%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 will be 55% quicker than the Radeon R9 M275X in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M275X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 39888 (55%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 is a little bit (more or less 15%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M275X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M275X		36000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5472 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 is the winner, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M275X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1728 (12%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.