GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific card. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M385X should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (650%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X should be a lot (more or less 613%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52960 (613%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M385X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13280 (307%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

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