GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 260X, which has clock speeds of 1100 MHz on the GPU, and 1625 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (53%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 260X is 225% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 72000 (225%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is quite a bit (approximately 470%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50800 (470%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is quite a bit (approximately 226%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12200 (226%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at 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 the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.