GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M390X, which features a clock frequency of 723 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M390X should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X will be quite a bit (approximately 757%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 81744 (757%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X is quite a bit (more or less 328%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17736 (328%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range 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 number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.