GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon R7 250X 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1125 MHz on this particular model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (102%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R7 250X 2GB should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 49600 (221%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X 2GB will be quite a bit (about 363%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31360 (363%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 250X 2GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number 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 card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.