GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4770, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 800 MHz on this specific card. It features 640(128x5) SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 4770		80 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (70%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4770 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		51200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4770 will be a lot (more or less 178%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		24000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15360 (178%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4770 should be quite a bit (about 178%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7680 (178%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.