GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this specific model. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M270X should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 59200 (463%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X should be a lot (more or less 236%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20360 (236%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X is quite a bit (approximately 169%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7280 (169%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.