GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 260X, which features core clock speeds of 1100 MHz on the GPU, and 1625 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (37%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 260X should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 65600 (171%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X should be much (more or less 133%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (133%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 260X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11000 (167%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.