GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7790, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this particular card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7790 should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (200%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 will be quite a bit (approximately 419%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 45200 (419%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7790 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GTS, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10600 (196%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.