GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this model. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M280X will be 588% faster than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 75200 (588%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be quite a bit (approximately 483%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41760 (483%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M280X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.