GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB, which comes with clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 480 SPUs along with 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 512MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		63 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB should perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (186%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB is much (about 122%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		19200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10560 (122%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB is superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		6400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface 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 bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at 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 chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.