GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1400 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 133 Watts (283%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 270X should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (1300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is quite a bit (approximately 826%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71360 (826%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27680 (641%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.