GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 143 Watts (304%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4890 1GB should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (457%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB will be a lot (about 363%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31360 (363%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB should be much (more or less 270%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.