GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 590, which comes with a clock frequency of 1469 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 12 nm design. It is made up of 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon RX 590		175 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 590, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		262144 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 230144 (719%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 will be much (approximately 1859%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 200736 (1859%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 will be much (more or less 771%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		47008 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 41608 (771%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.