GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280, which has a clock frequency of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280 is 971% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is much (about 1109%) more effective at anisotropic 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

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is the winner, by far. (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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can 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 colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.