GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs GeForce GTX 870M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 870M, which features a clock speed of 941 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 192-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1344 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
	Difference: 61 Watts (55%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm is 17% quicker than the GeForce GTX 870M overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 15888 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is quite a bit (more or less 154%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63920 (154%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 870M is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.