GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1400 MHz on this specific model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 103 Watts (219%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 270 should in theory be much better than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (1300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 will be quite a bit (approximately 733%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63360 (733%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24480 (567%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.