GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 M260X, which comes with a core clock speed of 825 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 384 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R7 M260X should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260X should be quite a bit (more or less 450%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16200 (450%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 M260X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (267%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.