GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 M260X, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 825 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 384 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R7 M260X should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260X is quite a bit (about 83%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9000 (83%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260X will be a lot (approximately 22%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (22%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.