GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 M260, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 715 MHz. The DDR3 memory works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 384 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB is 140% quicker than the Radeon R7 M260 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (140%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB will be quite a bit (more or less 54%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R7 M260. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9240 (54%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB is a bit (about 15%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R7 M260, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across 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 memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.