GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 260X, which has a core clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1625 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 67 Watts (58%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 260 should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon R7 260X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 7888 (8%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is a lot (about 67%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24736 (67%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 260X is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1472 (9%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.