GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M390X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 723 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
	Difference: 78 Watts (166%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M390X is 1150% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (1150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X is a lot (approximately 971%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 83904 (971%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X is quite a bit (approximately 436%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18816 (436%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.