GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R7 360

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 360, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1050 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1625 MHz on this specific card. It features 768 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon R7 360		100 Watts
	Difference: 53 Watts (113%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R7 360 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		104000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 81600 (364%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 360 is quite a bit (approximately 483%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41760 (483%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 360 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		16800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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