GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 128 Watts (272%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 should be 1100% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (1100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be quite a bit (approximately 826%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71360 (826%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is a lot (more or less 641%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27680 (641%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per 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 sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.