GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1400 MHz on this specific model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (140%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270X will be 460% faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (460%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be quite a bit (about 641%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69200 (641%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is a lot (approximately 493%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26600 (493%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.