GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5830, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 128 Watts (272%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5830 should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be quite a bit (about 419%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36160 (419%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is much (about 196%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB DDR2		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.