GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M380, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this 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 M380 should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (329%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 should be much (about 363%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31360 (363%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 should be much (more or less 270%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11680 (270%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.