GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), which comes with clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 480 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		63 Watts
GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 12 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) should be quite a bit (more or less 78%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		19200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8400 (78%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) is the winner, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		6400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1000 (19%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.