GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M295X, which has a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R9 M295X		125 Watts
	Difference: 78 Watts (166%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M295X should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 163200 (1275%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X should be quite a bit (more or less 1011%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 87360 (1011%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M295X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19680 (456%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.