GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4830 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4830 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 575 MHz. The GDDR4 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 4830 1GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (102%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4830 1GB should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4830 1GB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (350%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4830 1GB is a lot (about 113%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 4830 1GB		18400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9760 (113%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4830 1GB will be quite a bit (approximately 113%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4830 1GB		9200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4880 (113%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of 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.