GeForce 8600 GT vs ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870

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Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the ranking779not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Power efficiency4.09no data
ArchitectureTeraScale 2 (2009−2015)Tesla (2006−2010)
GPU code nameBroadwayG84
Market segmentLaptopDesktop
Release date7 January 2010 (14 years ago)17 April 2007 (17 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)no data$159

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores80032
Core clock speed700 MHz540 MHz
Number of transistors1,040 million289 million
Manufacturing process technology40 nm80 nm
Power consumption (TDP)50 Watt47 Watt
Texture fill rate28.008.640
Floating-point processing power1.12 TFLOPS0.07616 TFLOPS
ROPs168
TMUs4016

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Laptop sizelargeno data
InterfaceMXM-B (3.0)PCIe 1.0 x16
Lengthno data170 mm
Widthno data1-slot
Supplementary power connectorsno dataNone
SLI options-+

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory typeGDDR5GDDR3
Maximum RAM amount1 GB512 MB
Standard memory config per GPUno data256 MB
Memory bus width128 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speed1000 MHz700 MHz
Memory bandwidth64 GB/s22.4 GB/s
Shared memory--

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display ConnectorsNo outputs2x DVI, 1x S-Video

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX11.2 (11_0)11.1 (10_0)
Shader Model5.04.0
OpenGL4.42.1
OpenCL1.21.1
VulkanN/AN/A
CUDA-1.1

Pros & cons summary


Recency 7 January 2010 17 April 2007
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 512 MB
Chip lithography 40 nm 80 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 50 Watt 47 Watt

ATI Mobility HD 5870 has an age advantage of 2 years, a 100% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 100% more advanced lithography process.

8600 GT, on the other hand, has 6.4% lower power consumption.

We couldn't decide between Mobility Radeon HD 5870 and GeForce 8600 GT. We've got no test results to judge.

Be aware that Mobility Radeon HD 5870 is a notebook card while GeForce 8600 GT is a desktop one.


Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.

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ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870
Mobility Radeon HD 5870
NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT
GeForce 8600 GT

Comparisons with similar GPUs

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Community ratings

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3.4 53 votes

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3.1 1013 votes

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Questions & comments

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