GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 M260, which comes with clock speeds of 715 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8600 GTS is 100% quicker than the Radeon R7 M260 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260 will be a lot (more or less 59%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6360 (59%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260 is just a bit (more or less 6%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		5720 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 320 (6%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels the video card 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 amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.