GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon R7 250X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 250X, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 640 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R7 250X		95 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (102%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 250X, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 59200 (463%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X is quite a bit (more or less 363%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31360 (363%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 250X is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB 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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.