GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 M260X, which has GPU core speed of 825 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 384 Stream Processors, 24 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 M260X should theoretically perform a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is much (approximately 58%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R7 M260X. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11400 (58%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is a lot (approximately 58%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 M260X, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3800 (58%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 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 AA, 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 figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.