GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs Radeon R7 250X

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R7 250X		95 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (102%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 250X will be 463% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 59200 (463%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X should be quite a bit (about 363%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31360 (363%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 250X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11680 (270%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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