GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this 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)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		63 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) should be quite a bit (approximately 122%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		19200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10560 (122%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) is quite a bit (approximately 48%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM), and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		6400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2080 (48%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed 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 card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.