GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 285, which comes with a clock frequency of 918 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
	Difference: 143 Watts (304%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 285 should be 686% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 153600 (686%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 is a lot (more or less 1090%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 94176 (1090%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 is quite a bit (approximately 580%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25056 (580%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.