GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280, which features a GPU core clock speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 203 Watts (432%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280 should in theory be much better than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 217600 (971%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be much (more or less 1109%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 95856 (1109%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is quite a bit (more or less 591%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25536 (591%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.