GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 53 Watts (113%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M290X should be 586% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 131200 (586%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be quite a bit (more or less 687%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59360 (687%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22880 (530%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.