GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features GPU clock speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M290X should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (380%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a lot (approximately 530%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57200 (530%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is much (approximately 404%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21800 (404%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.