GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 M260, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 715 MHz. The DDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB should be a lot faster than the Radeon R7 M260 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (140%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB will be much (approximately 54%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 M260. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9240 (54%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		5720 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 880 (15%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.