GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 590, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1469 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 2000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon RX 590		175 Watts
	Difference: 128 Watts (272%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 590 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		262144 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 239744 (1070%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 is a lot (more or less 2348%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 202896 (2348%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 will be quite a bit (more or less 988%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		47008 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42688 (988%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel 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 get to the max fill rate.