GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 features core speeds of 540 MHz on the GPU, and 400 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 RAM. It features 32 SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 993 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past 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 type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 ability to get to the maximum fill rate.