GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 240, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 730 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 memory running at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 320 Stream Processors, 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 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
	Difference: 17 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R7 240 should in theory be much better than 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 should be much (approximately 69%) faster with regards to anisotropic 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

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 240 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, by a large margin. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.