GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 260X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1100 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1625 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R7 260X will be 81% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 46400 (81%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is a lot (approximately 196%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40800 (196%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is quite a bit (approximately 69%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen 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 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 video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.