GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which makes use of a 7 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1717 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM runs at a speed of 1750 MHz on this model. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon RX 5500 XT		130 Watts
	Difference: 83 Watts (177%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 5500 XT should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		229376 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 216576 (1692%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT should be much (more or less 1649%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		151096 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 142456 (1649%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5500 XT is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		54944 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 50624 (1172%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.