GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 250, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1150 MHz on this specific card. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R7 250 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (475%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250 is quite a bit (approximately 178%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15360 (178%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R7 250 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, by far. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3680 (85%)

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 transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.