GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 4350

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4350, which has a GPU core clock speed of 575 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 memory running at 500 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 80(16x5) Stream Processors, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4350		22 Watts
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (114%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4350 in general. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4350		8000 MB/sec
	Difference: 4800 (60%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 should be quite a bit (approximately 88%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4350. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4350		4600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4040 (88%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 is quite a bit (approximately 88%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4350, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4350		2300 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2020 (88%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.