GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7770, which comes with a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (70%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7770 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 49600 (221%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 should be much (approximately 363%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31360 (363%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7770 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 processed in a second.

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