GeForce GTX 260 vs GeForce GTX 870M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 870M, which features core speeds of 941 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1344 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 72 Watts (65%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 260 should in theory perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 870M in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be quite a bit (about 186%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68528 (186%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 870M is superior to the GeForce GTX 260, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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