GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which features clock speeds of 970 MHz on the GPU, and 1425 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R9 380 2G		190 Watts
	Difference: 143 Watts (304%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 380 2G should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 169600 (1325%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G is much (more or less 1157%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 100000 (1157%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G will be much (approximately 619%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26720 (619%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.