GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R9 M370X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M370X, which features a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M370X is 221% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M370X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 49600 (221%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M370X should be much (more or less 270%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R9 M370X		32000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23360 (270%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M370X should be quite a bit (about 196%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M370X		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8480 (196%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of 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 number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.