GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M380, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1500 MHz on this particular model. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 260 should theoretically be just a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M380 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 15888 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 is just a bit (about 9%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3136 (9%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 should be a bit (about 1%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon R9 M380, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 128 (1%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per 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 number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.