GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 240, which features 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 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 17 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R7 240 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 should be much (about 69%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5960 (69%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 should be quite a bit (approximately 35%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.