Compare any two graphics cards:
GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 7970
IntroThe GeForce 8600 GTS uses a 80 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 675 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 32 SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which features a clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.
Display Graphs
Power Usage and Theoretical BenchmarksPower Consumption (Max TDP)
Memory BandwidthIn theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)
Texel RateThe Radeon HD 7970 is a lot (approximately 996%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)
Pixel RateIf using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)
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
Display Prices
Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though. Specifications
Display Specifications
Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions. Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second. Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.
Display Prices
Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.
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