GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which has GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7870 should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (380%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be quite a bit (approximately 641%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69200 (641%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a lot (more or less 493%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8600 GTS, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26600 (493%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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