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

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which features GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run 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

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall. (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 is a lot (more or less 247%) faster with regards to texture 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

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 512MB is a better choice, by a large margin. (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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.