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

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, which comes with core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 160 SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

In theory, the GeForce 8600 GTS should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS should be a lot (about 80%) more effective at 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

The GeForce 8600 GTS is much (approximately 80%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.