GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5970, which comes with a clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1600 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 247 Watts (526%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5970, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 233600 (1043%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (more or less 2585%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 223360 (2585%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 88480 (2048%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 figure 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 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.