GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 580, which features core clock speeds of 1257 MHz on the GPU, and 2000 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
	Difference: 138 Watts (294%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 580 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 249344 (1948%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 will be much (more or less 1995%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 172368 (1995%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 580 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 35904 (831%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.