GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which features a clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, in theory, should be a small bit faster than the Radeon R9 M385X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 15888 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X will be much (approximately 49%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20128 (49%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M385X is the winner, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1472 (9%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.