GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 250, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1150 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 384 Stream Processors, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 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 R7 250		65 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R7 250 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (229%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250 should be much (approximately 178%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15360 (178%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 250 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3680 (85%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.