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GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 comes with a clock speed of 540 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 400 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 80 nm design. It is made up of 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 47 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 200 Watts
Difference: 153 Watts (326%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7950 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 240000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 12800 MB/sec
Difference: 227200 (1775%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 is a lot (more or less 937%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 8640 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 80960 (937%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7950 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 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 512MB DDR2

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 512MB DDR2 Radeon HD 7950
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year April 2007 January 2012
Code Name G84 Tahiti Pro
Memory 512 MB 1536 MB
Core Speed 540 MHz 800 MHz
Memory Speed 800 MHz 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 47 watts 200 watts
Bandwidth 12800 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 DDR2 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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2

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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