GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270X, which comes with core clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 133 Watts (283%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270X should be 700% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 156800 (700%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be a lot (about 826%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71360 (826%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is much (about 641%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27680 (641%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be 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 better this number, the better the 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 card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.