GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4350

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4350, which comes with a clock speed of 575 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 500 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 TAUs, 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 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (114%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon HD 4350 overall. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4350		8000 MB/sec
	Difference: 4800 (60%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 is quite a bit (more or less 88%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4350. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4350		4600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4040 (88%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 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.