GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 160 SPUs as well as 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 GT 512MB GDDR3		47 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (52%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (29%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 should be a lot (more or less 44%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		6000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2640 (44%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 should be quite a bit (more or less 44%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) 1GB		3000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1320 (44%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.