GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon R7 360

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 360, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1050 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1625 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 768 SPUs, 48 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R7 360		100 Watts
	Difference: 53 Watts (113%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 360 is 713% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		104000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 91200 (713%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 360 is much (approximately 483%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41760 (483%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 360 is a lot (about 289%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		16800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12480 (289%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one 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 - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.