GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs along with 72 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 104 Watts (221%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5850 should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is much (about 504%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43560 (504%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is quite a bit (approximately 437%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18880 (437%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.