GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon R9 M265X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M265X, which has GPU clock speed of 575 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M265X should be much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M265X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 49600 (221%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M265X is a lot (more or less 166%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R9 M265X		23000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14360 (166%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M265X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M265X		9200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4880 (113%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.