GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 5670

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5670, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 400(80x5) SPUs along with 20 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5670 will be 400% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5670 is a lot (about 79%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6860 (79%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5670 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1880 (44%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.