GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7850, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 860 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (73%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7850 should be much faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (380%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be much (more or less 410%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44240 (410%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22120 (410%)

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 transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.