GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 5570

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5570, which has a core clock frequency of 650 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 400(80x5) SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, 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

In theory, the Radeon HD 5570 will be 125% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5570 should be much (approximately 50%) more effective at anisotropic 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

The Radeon HD 5570 will be a bit (more or less 20%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.