GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features a core clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
	Difference: 71 Watts (71%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M290X should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 41712 (37%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be quite a bit (approximately 64%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26528 (64%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is much (approximately 69%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11072 (69%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.