GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7990, which comes with core speeds of 950 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 7990		375 Watts
	Difference: 328 Watts (698%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7990 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		576000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 553600 (2471%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 will be much (more or less 2715%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		243200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 234560 (2715%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7990 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		60800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB 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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output 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 get to the max fill rate.