GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950, which comes with a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 153 Watts (326%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7950 should be 1775% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 227200 (1775%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 is quite a bit (about 937%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 80960 (937%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7950 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21280 (493%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video 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 Raster Operations Pipelines 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 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 get to the maximum fill rate.