GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 580, which features GPU clock speed of 1257 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 2000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 2304 Stream Processors, 144 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 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
	Difference: 138 Watts (294%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 580 should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 239744 (1070%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 will be much (more or less 1995%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 172368 (1995%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 is a lot (more or less 831%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.