GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 M260X, which features a core clock frequency of 825 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 384 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R7 M260X should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB is quite a bit (about 33%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R7 M260X. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6600 (33%)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have exactly the same pixel rate, so in theory they should perform equally good at at full screen anti-aliasing, and be able to handle the same screen resolutions. (explain)

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 MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.