GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 270, which features GPU clock speed of 900 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 103 Watts (219%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 156800 (700%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 will be much (more or less 733%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63360 (733%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 will be much (more or less 567%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.