GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7790, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator 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 7790		85 Watts
	Difference: 38 Watts (81%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7790 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (650%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 is a lot (approximately 548%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47360 (548%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7790 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11680 (270%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.