GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 M260, which features GPU clock speed of 715 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 384 Stream Processors, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R7 M260 will be 25% faster than the GeForce 8500 GT overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260 will be a lot (more or less 377%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13560 (377%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 M260 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		5720 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3920 (218%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 reach the max fill rate.