GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M270X, which comes with GPU core speed of 725 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M270X should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 59200 (463%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X is quite a bit (more or less 236%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20360 (236%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X should be quite a bit (more or less 169%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7280 (169%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.