GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 5570

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5570, which comes with clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 400(80x5) SPUs along with 20 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5570		43 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5570 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		28800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5570 is much (more or less 50%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		13000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4360 (50%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5570 is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		5200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 880 (20%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.