GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 M260X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 825 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should be much faster than the Radeon R7 M260X in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a lot (about 288%) better at AF than the Radeon R7 M260X. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57000 (288%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be quite a bit (approximately 191%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 M260X, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12600 (191%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can 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 the card's 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.