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GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 comes with a GPU core clock speed of 540 MHz, and the 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM is set to run at 700 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 32 Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 M260, which comes with a clock frequency of 715 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 384 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 will be 40% faster than the Radeon R7 M260 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 22400 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260 16000 MB/sec
Difference: 6400 (40%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260 will be a lot (more or less 99%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260 17160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 8640 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 8520 (99%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R7 M260 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260 5720 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 4320 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 1400 (32%)

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

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GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3

Amazon.com

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Radeon R7 M260

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 Radeon R7 M260
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year April 2007 June 2014
Code Name G84 Opal/Topaz
Memory 256 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 540 MHz 715 MHz
Memory Speed 1400 MHz 2000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 47 watts (Unknown) watts
Bandwidth 22400 MB/sec 16000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 8640 Mtexels/sec 17160 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 4320 Mpixels/sec 5720 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 32 384
Texture Mapping Units 16 24
Render Output Units 8 8
Bus Type GDDR3 DDR3
Bus Width 128-bit 64-bit
Fab Process 80 nm 28 nm
Transistors 289 million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 3.0 x8
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R7 M260

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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