GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 253 Watts (538%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 307200 (2400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be a lot (more or less 1381%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 119360 (1381%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be much (more or less 1085%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 46880 (1085%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.