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GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 makes use of a 80 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 540 MHz. The DDR2 RAM works at a frequency of 400 MHz on this model. It features 32 SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7990, which comes with a clock speed of 950 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 47 Watts
Radeon HD 7990 375 Watts
Difference: 328 Watts (698%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7990 will be 4400% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990 576000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 12800 MB/sec
Difference: 563200 (4400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 is much (more or less 2715%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990 243200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 8640 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 234560 (2715%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7990 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990 60800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 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

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GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2

Amazon.com

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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

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Model GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 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 800 MHz 6000 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 47 watts 375 watts
Bandwidth 12800 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 DDR2 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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at 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 its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's 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 rate is also dependant 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.

Display Prices

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GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2

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.

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