GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7990, which features a clock frequency of 950 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 7990		375 Watts
	Difference: 328 Watts (698%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7990 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		576000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 563200 (4400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 is a lot (about 2715%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		243200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 234560 (2715%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 should be a lot (more or less 1307%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		60800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 56480 (1307%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one 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 higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.