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GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GTS makes use of a 80 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 675 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 32 SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 828 MHz on this specific model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8600 GTS should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 overall. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS 32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830 26496 MB/sec
Difference: 5504 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS will be a small bit (about 1%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS 10800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830 10688 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 112 (1%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3690/3830 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830 10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS 5400 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 5288 (98%)

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

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GeForce 8600 GTS

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3690/3830

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

Display Specifications

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Model GeForce 8600 GTS Radeon HD 3690/3830
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year April 2007 2008
Code Name G84 RV670 PRO
Memory 512 MB 256 MB
Core Speed 675 MHz 668 MHz
Memory Speed 2000 MHz 1656 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 75 watts 75 watts
Bandwidth 32000 MB/sec 26496 MB/sec
Texel Rate 10800 Mtexels/sec 10688 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 5400 Mpixels/sec 10688 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 32 320(64x5)
Texture Mapping Units 16 16
Render Output Units 8 16
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR3
Bus Width 128-bit 128-bit
Fab Process 80 nm 55 nm
Transistors 289 million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 2.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 8600 GTS

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3690/3830

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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