GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6790, which features GPU clock speed of 840 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 103 Watts (219%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (950%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is much (approximately 289%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24960 (289%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9120 (211%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.