GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R9 M370X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M370X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1125 MHz on this specific card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M370X should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M370X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 40000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M370X will be quite a bit (about 196%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon R9 M370X		32000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (196%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M370X is a lot (about 137%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M370X		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7400 (137%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.