GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 Nano

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 Nano, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 4096 MB of HBM RAM running at 500 MHz through a 4096-bit bus. It also features 4096 SPUs, 256 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon R9 Nano		175 Watts
	Difference: 128 Watts (272%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 Nano should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 Nano		512000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 499200 (3900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 Nano is quite a bit (about 2863%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 Nano		256000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 247360 (2863%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 Nano is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 Nano		64000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 59680 (1381%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.