GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 260X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1625 MHz on this card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (145%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 260X should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 91200 (713%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is quite a bit (more or less 613%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52960 (613%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R7 260X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13280 (307%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.