GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M270X, which features GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M270X should perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 40000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X will be quite a bit (about 169%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18200 (169%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X should be quite a bit (approximately 115%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6200 (115%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.