GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 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 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 153 Watts (326%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 217600 (971%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB will be quite a bit (more or less 937%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 80960 (937%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be quite a bit (about 493%) better at AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per 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 worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.