GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6790, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 840 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1050 MHz on this particular model. It features 800 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 103 Watts (219%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (500%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is quite a bit (approximately 289%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24960 (289%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is quite a bit (approximately 211%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9120 (211%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.