GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7790, which comes with core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
	Difference: 38 Watts (81%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7790 should be much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (650%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 should be much (about 548%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47360 (548%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7790 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11680 (270%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's 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 rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.