GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 240, which comes with GPU clock speed of 730 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320 SPUs, 20 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 8600 GTS should theoretically be just a bit superior to the Radeon R7 240 in general. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 will be a lot (more or less 35%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3800 (35%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 is a small bit (approximately 8%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 440 (8%)

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.