GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M270X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1125 MHz on this specific card. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M270X is 463% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 59200 (463%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X will be a lot (approximately 236%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20360 (236%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X should be a lot (more or less 169%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.