GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which has a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M280X should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (175%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is quite a bit (about 367%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39600 (367%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M280X is superior to the GeForce 8600 GTS, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9000 (167%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics 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 number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.