GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M295X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R9 M295X		125 Watts
	Difference: 78 Watts (166%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M295X should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 163200 (1275%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X should be a lot (approximately 1011%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 87360 (1011%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M295X is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19680 (456%)

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 transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.