GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon R9 M295X Mac Edition

Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the ranking381not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Power efficiency3.71no data
ArchitectureGCN 3.0 (2014−2019)Tesla (2006−2010)
GPU code nameAmethystG84
Market segmentLaptopDesktop
Release date23 November 2014 (9 years ago)17 April 2007 (17 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)no data$199

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores204832
Core clock speed850 MHz675 MHz
Number of transistors5,000 million289 million
Manufacturing process technology28 nm80 nm
Power consumption (TDP)250 Watt60 Watt
Texture fill rate108.810.80
Floating-point processing power3.482 TFLOPS0.0928 TFLOPS
ROPs328
TMUs12816

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

InterfaceMXM-B (3.0)PCIe 1.0 x16
Lengthno data198 mm
Widthno data1-slot
Supplementary power connectorsno data1x 6-pin
SLI options-+

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory typeGDDR5GDDR3
Maximum RAM amount4 GB256 MB
Standard memory config per GPUno data256 MB
Memory bus width256 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speed1362 MHz1000 MHz
Memory bandwidth174.3 GB/s32 GB/s

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display ConnectorsNo outputs2x DVI, 1x S-Video

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX12 (12_0)11.1 (10_0)
Shader Model6.34.0
OpenGL4.62.1
OpenCL2.01.1
Vulkan1.2.131N/A
CUDA-1.1

Pros & cons summary


Recency 23 November 2014 17 April 2007
Maximum RAM amount 4 GB 256 MB
Chip lithography 28 nm 80 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 250 Watt 60 Watt

R9 M295X Mac Edition has an age advantage of 7 years, a 1500% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 185.7% more advanced lithography process.

8600 GTS, on the other hand, has 316.7% lower power consumption.

We couldn't decide between Radeon R9 M295X Mac Edition and GeForce 8600 GTS. We've got no test results to judge.

Be aware that Radeon R9 M295X Mac Edition is a notebook card while GeForce 8600 GTS is a desktop one.


Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.

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AMD Radeon R9 M295X Mac Edition
Radeon R9 M295X Mac Edition
NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS
GeForce 8600 GTS

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Community ratings

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2.8 6 votes

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3.2 199 votes

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