GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 260X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1625 MHz on this card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R7 260X should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 9800 GTX overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 33600 (48%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is quite a bit (about 43%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (43%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 260X is superior to the GeForce 9800 GTX, by far. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (63%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.