GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 970 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1425 MHz on this card. 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 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon R9 380 2G		190 Watts
	Difference: 143 Watts (304%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 380 2G should perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (714%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G is quite a bit (more or less 1157%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 100000 (1157%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G is quite a bit (approximately 619%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26720 (619%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.