GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 M260X, which comes with GPU clock speed of 825 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 384 Stream Processors, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 M260X is 11% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB is a small bit (approximately 5%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R7 M260X. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1000 (5%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.