GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which comes with GPU core speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 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 3850 256MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3850 256MB should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 40192 (314%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB will be a lot (approximately 24%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2048 (24%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB should be quite a bit (about 147%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6368 (147%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.