GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270, which features core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 103 Watts (219%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270 should be 1300% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (1300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be much (about 733%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63360 (733%)

Pixel Rate

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

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24480 (567%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.