GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4750

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4750, which features GPU core speed of 730 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 800 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640(128x5) Stream Processors, 32 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 DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 4750		75 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4750 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4750		51200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4750 should be quite a bit (more or less 170%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 4750		23360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14720 (170%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4750 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4750		11680 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7360 (170%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video 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 number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.