GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M395X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M395X, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X is a lot (more or less 757%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 81744 (757%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X should be a lot (more or less 328%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.