GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 240, which comes with core clock speeds of 730 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 320 SPUs as well as 20 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
	Difference: 17 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R7 240 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (29%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 should be much (more or less 69%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5960 (69%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 should be a lot (approximately 35%) better at AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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