GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 240, which has a clock frequency of 730 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, 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 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
	Difference: 17 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R7 240 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (29%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 will be much (about 69%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5960 (69%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 will be much (more or less 35%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and also able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1520 (35%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed 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 this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a 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 amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. 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 reach the maximum fill rate.