GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 2560 SPUs along with 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 93 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 390 8G should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 260 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 272112 (243%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G should be quite a bit (approximately 334%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 123136 (334%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G will be much (about 297%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 47872 (297%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.