GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR2 memory set to run at 950 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 40(8x5) SPUs, 4 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3470 256MB should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 17600 (138%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 is much (approximately 170%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5440 (170%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 will be quite a bit (more or less 35%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1120 (35%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.