GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 580, which comes with clock speeds of 1257 MHz on the GPU, and 2000 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 580 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 260 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 150256 (134%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 will be a lot (about 391%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 144144 (391%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 is much (approximately 149%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24096 (149%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.