Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 M260, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 715 MHz. The DDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 384 SPUs along with 24 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 6870		2870 points
Radeon R7 M260		1120 points
	Difference: 1750 (156%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6870 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon R7 M260 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 118400 (740%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be quite a bit (approximately 194%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 M260. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33240 (194%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is quite a bit (about 403%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R7 M260, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		5720 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23080 (403%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.