GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 480 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		50 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 8600 GTS should theoretically be a little bit better than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB is a lot (approximately 44%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		15600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (44%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GTS is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 200 (4%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.