GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 M260, which comes with a core clock frequency of 715 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 384 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
Radeon R7 M260		1120 points
	Difference: 9747 (870%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 970 should be 1300% quicker than the Radeon R7 M260 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 208000 (1300%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is much (about 536%) better at AF than the Radeon R7 M260. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 92040 (536%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		5720 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 61480 (1075%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.