GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R9 M375

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M375, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1015 MHz. The DDR3 memory runs at a frequency of 1100 MHz on this particular card. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M375, in theory, should perform just a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M375		35200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M375 is much (more or less 276%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon R9 M375		40600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29800 (276%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M375 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GTS, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M375		16240 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10840 (201%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.