GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7790, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this particular card. 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 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
	Difference: 38 Watts (81%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7790 is 650% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (650%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 will be quite a bit (more or less 548%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47360 (548%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7790 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.