GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 240, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 730 MHz. The DDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 320 SPUs along with 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 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 17 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R7 240 will be 125% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 will be quite a bit (approximately 69%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5960 (69%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 will be much (more or less 35%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.