GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 5570

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5570, which comes with a core clock frequency of 650 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 400(80x5) SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5570		43 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5570 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		28800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5570 should be quite a bit (more or less 50%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		13000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4360 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5570 should be a bit (more or less 20%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		5200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 880 (20%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.