GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6790, which has a clock speed of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6790 should in theory be much better than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (320%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 will be quite a bit (approximately 211%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (211%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8040 (149%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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 bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.