GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6790, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 840 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this specific card. It features 800 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 103 Watts (219%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6790 should be much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (950%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is a lot (approximately 289%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24960 (289%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB 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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one 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 better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core 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 bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.