GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon R9 M375

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M375, which comes with a clock speed of 1015 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 1100 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M375 should in theory be much better than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M375		35200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (57%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M375 is much (about 370%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R9 M375		40600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31960 (370%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M375 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M375		16240 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11920 (276%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.