Radeon R5 M230 vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 M260, which features a core clock frequency of 715 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 384 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R5 M230		1281 points
Radeon R7 M260		1120 points
	Difference: 161 (14%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260 is a bit (about 10%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R5 M230. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1560 (10%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260 is much (approximately 83%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R5 M230, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		5720 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2600 (83%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high 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 texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.