GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7770, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1125 MHz on this particular model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (70%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7770 should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 59200 (463%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 should be quite a bit (approximately 363%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31360 (363%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 should be much (more or less 270%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11680 (270%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.