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GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 features a core clock speed of 540 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 400 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 80 nm design. It features 32 SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280X, which features core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 47 Watts
Radeon R9 280X 250 Watts
Difference: 203 Watts (432%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X 288000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 12800 MB/sec
Difference: 275200 (2150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a lot (about 1159%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X 108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 8640 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 100160 (1159%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X 27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 4320 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 22880 (530%)

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

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GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2

Amazon.com

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Radeon R9 280X

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 Radeon R9 280X
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year April 2007 October 2013
Code Name G84 Tahiti XTL
Memory 256 MB 3072 MB
Core Speed 540 MHz 850 MHz
Memory Speed 800 MHz 6000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 47 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 12800 MB/sec 288000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 8640 Mtexels/sec 108800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 4320 Mpixels/sec 27200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 32 2048
Texture Mapping Units 16 128
Render Output Units 8 32
Bus Type DDR2 GDDR5
Bus Width 128-bit 384-bit
Fab Process 80 nm 28 nm
Transistors 289 million 4313 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 280X

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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