GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 4350

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4350, which has GPU core speed of 575 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 memory running at 500 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is made up of 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4350		22 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		47 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (114%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 will be 180% quicker than the Radeon HD 4350 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4350		8000 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (180%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 will be much (approximately 88%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4350. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4350		4600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4040 (88%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4350		2300 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2020 (88%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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.