GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 285, which comes with core speeds of 918 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
	Difference: 143 Watts (304%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 285 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 163200 (1275%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 will be a lot (more or less 1090%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 94176 (1090%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 285 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25056 (580%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated 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 ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.