GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7770, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1125 MHz on this specific card. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7770, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 40000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 will be a lot (more or less 270%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29200 (270%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 should be quite a bit (about 196%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10600 (196%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.