GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB, which features core clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 480 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		50 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		28800 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (29%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB should be much (about 81%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		15600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6960 (81%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB should be a bit (more or less 20%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		5200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 880 (20%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.