GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 480, which has a clock speed of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 52 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 480, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 150256 (134%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 is much (more or less 289%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 119808 (289%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19712 (122%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number 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 worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.