GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 M260, which features a core clock frequency of 715 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 64-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 384 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 M260 is 25% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 in general, due to its greater data rate. (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 (more or less 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

The Radeon R7 M260 is quite a bit (approximately 32%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.