GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon Pro Duo

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon Pro Duo, which features GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 4096 MB of HBM RAM set to run at 500 MHz through a 4096-bit bus. It also is made up of 4096 Stream Processors, 256 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon Pro Duo		350 Watts
	Difference: 303 Watts (645%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon Pro Duo should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon Pro Duo		1024000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1011200 (7900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon Pro Duo is quite a bit (approximately 5826%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon Pro Duo		512000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 503360 (5826%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon Pro Duo is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon Pro Duo		128000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 123680 (2863%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.