GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs GeForce GTX 870M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 870M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 941 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 1344 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 92 Watts (84%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 should be 17% faster than the GeForce GTX 870M overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 15888 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be a lot (approximately 154%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63920 (154%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be a lot (more or less 40%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6456 (40%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.