GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 M260X, which has clock speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 M260X is 186% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (186%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260X is much (about 129%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11160 (129%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260X will be a lot (more or less 53%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2280 (53%)

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.