GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon Pro Duo

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon Pro Duo, which features a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a HBM memory speed of 500 MHz. It also makes use of a 4096-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 4096 SPUs, 256 Texture Address Units, 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

Theoretically, the Radeon Pro Duo should be quite a bit faster than 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 will be a lot (about 5826%) faster with regards to anisotropic 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

The Radeon Pro Duo should be a lot (more or less 2863%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.