GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which features core clock speeds of 860 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 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 256MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 83 Watts (177%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7850 should be 586% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 131200 (586%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is a lot (approximately 537%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46400 (537%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23200 (537%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen 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 number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.