GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon RX 7900 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 7900 XT, which makes use of a 5 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1500 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 2500 MHz on this specific model. It features 5376 SPUs as well as 336 TAUs and 192 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon RX 7900 XT		300 Watts
	Difference: 253 Watts (538%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 7900 XT is 6300% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 7900 XT		819200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 806400 (6300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 7900 XT should be a lot (about 5733%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon RX 7900 XT		504000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		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 the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 7900 XT		288000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.