GeForce 8500 GT 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 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 384 Stream Processors, 24 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R7 M260X should in theory be much superior to the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260X will be quite a bit (about 450%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16200 (450%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 M260X is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (267%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number 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 better this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.