GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 M260, which has core clock speeds of 715 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM. It features 384 SPUs along with 24 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 should theoretically be a lot faster than the Radeon R7 M260 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260 will be quite a bit (about 95%) better at AF than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8360 (95%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 M260 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		5720 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1320 (30%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.