GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R7 360

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 360, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1050 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1625 MHz on this specific model. It features 768 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon R7 360		100 Watts
	Difference: 53 Watts (113%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 360 is 364% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		104000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 81600 (364%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 360 should be quite a bit (approximately 483%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41760 (483%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 360 should be a lot (about 289%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		16800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12480 (289%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.