GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 M260, which comes with GPU core speed of 715 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is made up of 384 Stream Processors, 24 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R7 M260 should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260 will be quite a bit (about 99%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8520 (99%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 M260 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		5720 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.