GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R7 250X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 250X, which features a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon R7 250X		95 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 250X should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 40000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X is a lot (approximately 270%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29200 (270%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X will be much (about 196%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10600 (196%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.