GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 900 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 160 Stream Processors, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		31 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (142%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8600 GTS, in theory, should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS is much (about 80%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		6000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (80%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GTS is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		3000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (80%)

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

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.