GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which has GPU core speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 828 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3690/3830 should perform a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 4096 (18%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 will be much (approximately 24%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2048 (24%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3690/3830 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6368 (147%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.