GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4750

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4750, which features a GPU core clock speed of 730 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 800 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 4750		75 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4750 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4750		51200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4750 will be a lot (more or less 170%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 4750		23360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14720 (170%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4750 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4750		11680 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7360 (170%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.