GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M390X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
	Difference: 78 Watts (166%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M390X should perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (1150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X should be quite a bit (more or less 971%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 83904 (971%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X should be much (approximately 436%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.