GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs GeForce GTX 870M

Intro

Compare all that 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 frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 1344 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

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 perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 870M in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be a lot (approximately 154%) better at anisotropic 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 quite a bit (more or less 40%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics 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 colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.