GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon RX 7900 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 7900 XT, which features a core clock frequency of 1500 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 2500 MHz. It also uses a 320-bit bus, and makes use of a 5 nm design. It features 5376 SPUs, 336 Texture Address Units, and 192 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon RX 7900 XT		300 Watts
	Difference: 253 Watts (538%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 7900 XT should be much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 7900 XT		819200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 796800 (3557%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 7900 XT should be a lot (about 5733%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon RX 7900 XT		504000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 495360 (5733%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 7900 XT is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 7900 XT		288000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 283680 (6567%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.