GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which has core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 128 Watts (272%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 will be 471% faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 105600 (471%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is quite a bit (approximately 419%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36160 (419%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be quite a bit (approximately 196%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8480 (196%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.