GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon R9 380X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 380X, which comes with clock speeds of 970 MHz on the GPU, and 1425 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 380X		190 Watts
	Difference: 143 Watts (304%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 380X should be 1325% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		182400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 169600 (1325%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X will be much (about 1337%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		124160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 115520 (1337%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380X is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		31040 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26720 (619%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 video card can 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 Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.