GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7970, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1375 MHz on this specific card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 203 Watts (432%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 251200 (1963%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is much (more or less 1270%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 109760 (1270%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be quite a bit (more or less 585%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25280 (585%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.