GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which comes with core clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3690/3830 should be 18% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 4096 (18%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 is quite a bit (about 24%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2048 (24%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3690/3830 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.