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GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 makes use of a 80 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 540 MHz. The DDR2 RAM works at a speed of 400 MHz on this card. It features 32 SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6790, which has GPU clock speed of 840 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 47 Watts
Radeon HD 6790 150 Watts
Difference: 103 Watts (219%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6790 is 950% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790 134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 12800 MB/sec
Difference: 121600 (950%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is quite a bit (approximately 289%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790 33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 8640 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 24960 (289%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 will be a lot (about 211%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790 13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 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

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GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 6790

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 Radeon HD 6790
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year April 2007 April 2011
Code Name G84 Barts LE
Memory 512 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 540 MHz 840 MHz
Memory Speed 800 MHz 4200 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 47 watts 150 watts
Bandwidth 12800 MB/sec 134400 MB/sec
Texel Rate 8640 Mtexels/sec 33600 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 4320 Mpixels/sec 13440 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 32 800
Texture Mapping Units 16 40
Render Output Units 8 16
Bus Type DDR2 GDDR5
Bus Width 128-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 80 nm 40 nm
Transistors 289 million 1700 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. 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 ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6790

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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