GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which features core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is a lot (about 641%) faster with regards to anisotropic 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%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 clock 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.