GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 M275X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M275X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1125 MHz on this card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R9 M275X		50 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M275X should be 463% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 59200 (463%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X is much (about 317%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27360 (317%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X is a lot (approximately 233%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10080 (233%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.