GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon RX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 460 2GB, which has GPU clock speed of 1090 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1750 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 896 Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 16 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 460 2GB		75 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon RX 460 2GB should perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 460 2GB		112000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (775%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 460 2GB will be much (more or less 606%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon RX 460 2GB		61040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52400 (606%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 460 2GB is much (about 304%) better at AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon RX 460 2GB		17440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13120 (304%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's 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 also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.