GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 260 should in theory be a little bit better than the Radeon R9 M385X in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X will be a lot (approximately 67%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24736 (67%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X is a small bit (about 9%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.