Compare any two graphics cards:
VS

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 makes use of a 80 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 540 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 700 MHz on this model. It features 32 SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7990, which has GPU clock speed of 950 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 47 Watts
Radeon HD 7990 375 Watts
Difference: 328 Watts (698%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7990 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990 576000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 22400 MB/sec
Difference: 553600 (2471%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 will be much (more or less 2715%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990 243200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 8640 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 234560 (2715%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7990 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990 60800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 4320 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 56480 (1307%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7990

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

Display Specifications

Hide Specifications

Model GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 Radeon HD 7990
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year April 2007 April 2013
Code Name G84 Malta
Memory 512 MB 3072 MB (x2)
Core Speed 540 MHz 950 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 1400 MHz 6000 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 47 watts 375 watts
Bandwidth 22400 MB/sec 576000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 8640 Mtexels/sec 243200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 4320 Mpixels/sec 60800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 32 2048 (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 16 128 (x2)
Render Output Units 8 32 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 128-bit 384-bit (x2)
Fab Process 80 nm 28 nm
Transistors 289 million 4313 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7990

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Comments

Be the first to leave a comment!

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*

WordPress Anti Spam by WP-SpamShield