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GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 comes with a core clock frequency of 540 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 400 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 80 nm design. It is comprised of 32 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which features GPU core speed of 668 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 1GB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 40192 (314%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 1GB is a lot (about 24%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2048 (24%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 1GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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

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GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2

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Radeon HD 3850 1GB

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2	Radeon HD 3850 1GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	April 2007	Nov 19, 2007
Code Name	G84	RV670 PRO
Memory	512 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	540 MHz	668 MHz
Memory Speed	800 MHz	1656 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	47 watts	75 watts
Bandwidth	12800 MB/sec	52992 MB/sec
Texel Rate	8640 Mtexels/sec	10688 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	4320 Mpixels/sec	10688 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	32	320(64x5)
Texture Mapping Units	16	16
Render Output Units	8	16
Bus Type	DDR2	GDDR3
Bus Width	128-bit	256-bit
Fab Process	80 nm	55 nm
Transistors	289 million	(Unknown) million
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x
DirectX Version	DirectX 10	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.0	OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range 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 number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends 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.

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