GeForce GTX 260 vs GeForce GTX 870M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 870M, which features core speeds of 941 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1344 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 72 Watts (65%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 260 should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 870M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 15888 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be much (approximately 186%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68528 (186%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 870M is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6456 (40%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.