GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs Radeon R7 M360

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 M360, which comes with a clock speed of 1125 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 64-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 384 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 M360 will be 25% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R7 M360		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M360 should be a lot (more or less 213%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R7 M360		27000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18360 (213%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 M360 should be quite a bit (more or less 108%) better at AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R7 M360		9000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4680 (108%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.