GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which has GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 900 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 512MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 103 Watts (219%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB is 414% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 92800 (414%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should be a lot (more or less 247%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21360 (247%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB will be much (about 178%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7680 (178%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past 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 RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 ability to get to the maximum fill rate.