GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon R9 M275X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M275X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this specific model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon R9 M275X		50 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M275X, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 49600 (221%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X will be quite a bit (more or less 317%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27360 (317%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X will be quite a bit (approximately 233%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10080 (233%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.