GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon R7 370 4G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 370 4G, which features clock speeds of 975 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R7 370 4G		110 Watts
	Difference: 63 Watts (134%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R7 370 4G should be 1300% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		179200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (1300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 370 4G will be much (more or less 622%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		62400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53760 (622%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 370 4G is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		31200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26880 (622%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.