GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 240, which comes with GPU core speed of 730 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8600 GTS should theoretically perform a small bit faster than the Radeon R7 240 overall. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 is much (approximately 35%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3800 (35%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 240 is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 440 (8%)

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 (in units of megabytes 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 clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of 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 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.