GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280, which has clock speeds of 933 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 203 Watts (432%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 227200 (1775%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is a lot (approximately 1109%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 95856 (1109%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is quite a bit (about 591%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.