GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which features core speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator 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 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (126%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 512MB should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (350%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB is much (approximately 44%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3760 (44%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 512MB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8080 (187%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.