GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which has a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 228 Watts (485%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 390 8G should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 371200 (2900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G should be much (more or less 1752%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 151360 (1752%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390 8G is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 59680 (1381%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends 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.