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GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 comes with a clock speed of 540 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 700 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 80 nm design. It is made up of 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950, which features core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 47 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 200 Watts
Difference: 153 Watts (326%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7950 is 971% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 240000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 22400 MB/sec
Difference: 217600 (971%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 should be quite a bit (about 937%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 8640 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 80960 (937%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 should be quite a bit (approximately 493%) better at AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 4320 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 21280 (493%)

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 1GB GDDR3

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 7950

Amazon.com

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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 1GB GDDR3 Radeon HD 7950
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year April 2007 January 2012
Code Name G84 Tahiti Pro
Memory 1024 MB 1536 MB
Core Speed 540 MHz 800 MHz
Memory Speed 1400 MHz 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 47 watts 200 watts
Bandwidth 22400 MB/sec 240000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 8640 Mtexels/sec 89600 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 4320 Mpixels/sec 25600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 32 1792
Texture Mapping Units 16 112
Render Output Units 8 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 128-bit 384-bit
Fab Process 80 nm 28 nm
Transistors 289 million 4313 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7950

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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