GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4730, which has a core clock speed of 700 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 93 Watts (198%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4730 should in theory be much better than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (350%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4730 should be a lot (approximately 159%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13760 (159%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4730 should be much (more or less 30%) 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 slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1280 (30%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.