GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB, which features clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 480 SPUs as well as 24 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		63 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		64000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB is a lot (about 122%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		19200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10560 (122%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB will be quite a bit (approximately 48%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		6400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.