GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4790, which has a core clock speed of 600 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4790 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4790 will be quite a bit (approximately 122%) better at 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 lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4790 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and very much so. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.