GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M385X, which features GPU clock speed of 1100 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 896 Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M385X will be 329% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (329%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X should be quite a bit (about 613%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52960 (613%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M385X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13280 (307%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.