GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 53 Watts (113%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M290X should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 131200 (586%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be much (about 687%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59360 (687%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22880 (530%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.