GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 260X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1625 MHz on this specific model. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (145%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 260X, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 81600 (364%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is a lot (approximately 613%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52960 (613%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X will be quite a bit (approximately 307%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13280 (307%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.