GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 260X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1625 MHz on this card. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (145%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R7 260X should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 91200 (713%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X should be a lot (about 613%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52960 (613%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 260X is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB 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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range 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 worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.