GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon RX 470 4GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 470 4GB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 926 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1650 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 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 RX 470 4GB		120 Watts
	Difference: 73 Watts (155%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 470 4GB, in theory, should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		211200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 198400 (1550%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 4GB will be much (more or less 1272%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		118528 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 109888 (1272%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 4GB should be a lot (more or less 586%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		29632 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25312 (586%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

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