In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 are significantly better than the AMD FireGL V5100.

The 8600 GT was released over a year more recently than the FireGL V5100, and so the 8600 GT is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the FireGL V5100.

The 8600 GT has 384 MB more video memory than the FireGL V5100, so is likely to be slightly better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the 8600 GT also has superior memory performance overall.

The 8600 GT has 11.2 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the FireGL V5100, which means that the memory performance of the 8600 GT is slightly better than the FireGL V5100.

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 has 32 Shader Processing Units and the FireGL V5100 has 6. However, the actual shader performance of the 8600 GT is 43 and the actual shader performance of the FireGL V5100 is 2. The 8600 GT having 41 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the 8600 GT delivers a slightly smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the FireGL V5100.

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 requires 46 Watts to run but there is no entry for the FireGL V5100. We would recommend a PSU with at least 350 Watts for the 8600 GT and a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the FireGL V5100. The 8600 GT has been recommended a PSU with 50 Watts more than the FireGL V5100. The difference is significant enough that the 8600 GT may have a slight adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the FireGL V5100.