GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4790, which comes with a core clock speed of 600 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4790 is 700% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (700%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4790 should be quite a bit (more or less 122%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10560 (122%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4790 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5280 (122%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.