GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 480, which has GPU clock speed of 1120 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 2000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
	Difference: 103 Watts (219%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 480 should be 1070% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 239744 (1070%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 should be quite a bit (more or less 1767%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 152640 (1767%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31520 (730%)

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 maximum amount of data (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 speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.