GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 240, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 730 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 320 Stream Processors, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
	Difference: 17 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R7 240 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 should be much (about 69%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5960 (69%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 240 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1520 (35%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.