GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 5750 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5750 512MB, which has a clock frequency of 700 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1150 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 720(144x5) SPUs, 36 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation 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 5750 512MB		86 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (83%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5750 512MB should perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5750 512MB		73600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (475%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5750 512MB will be quite a bit (more or less 192%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 5750 512MB		25200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16560 (192%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5750 512MB will be much (about 159%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5750 512MB		11200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6880 (159%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.