GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which has a GPU core clock speed of 970 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1425 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1792 Stream Processors, 112 Texture Address Units, 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 380 4G		190 Watts
	Difference: 143 Watts (304%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 380 4G should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 169600 (1325%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G will be much (more or less 1157%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 100000 (1157%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380 4G is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		31040 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.